Higher education challenges and institutional responses

Education

Sara in Anzia Yezierska's Bread Givers and Ana of Patricia Cardoso's film Real Women Have Curves both face extraordinary struggles to earn their parents' approval. Their parents directly stifle their attempts to achieve personal and professional goals. Although Bread Givers focuses on a poor Jewish family in New York, and Real Women Have Curves details life in the Chicano community of Los Angeles, the two books address similar themes. Both stories describe immigrant communities in the United States and how families form social and cultural barriers to protect themselves. Poverty and the seemingly fruitless struggle for upward social mobility is a common element in both Real Women Have Curves and Bread Givers. Carmen and Moses, who are first-generation immigrants, also seem to want to restrain their daughters due to resentment, bitterness, and jealousy. However, no issue is more poignant in either of these two stories than gender. Proscribed gender roles and norms of female behavior are the reasons why Ana's mother Carmen and Sara's father Reb belittle their daughters and discourage them from pursuing their dreams.

The conflict between Ana and Carmen is complex, but centers on their different views of women's role in society. Carmen is a traditional Mexican mother. For Carmen, marriage and childbirth define her existence and she also feels that domestication should fulfill Ana too. Carmen does not understand why her daughter does not have the same values she has, and tries hard to persuade Ana to find a husband.

Finding a husband, moreover, is presented as being diametrically opposed to pursuing a higher education. To Carmen, attending college is dangerous because she views Ana's youth as one of the assets that will help her find a husband. Slimming down is another. Carmen assumes that because Ana is overweight, she will be unable to attract a man and thus will not be able to get married. In one scene in the movie, Carmen is musing about her amulets. She has one that she hung up when Estela turned 18: it was an icon for fertility. Carmen takes it down, saying "it's too late for Estela to get married; now I have to concentrate on Ana." Her outmoded ideas of marriage and gender roles are completely in conflict with Ana's worldview.

In Bread Givers, Reb also has outmoded ideas of marriage and gender roles that conflict with his daughters' perspectives. Bread Givers was written in 1925, only five years after universal suffrage was passed in the United States. Rebelling against traditional gender roles and norms was even more difficult for Sara and her sisters than it was for Ana in contemporary Los Angeles.

Like Carmen of Real Women Have Curves, Reb believes that a woman's ultimate identity is fulfilled in marriage and childbirth. He also believes that his daughters do not necessarily have a right to choose who they marry; they therefore do not have the right to self-determination. Carmen is not as severe as Reb, but she is emotionally manipulative with Ana. For example, Carmen describes a scene from one of her telenovelas in which a mother's head was cut off by a bus after her daughter disobeyed her wishes. "See Ana, that's what happens when you don't listen to your mother," Carmen says. Reb, who acts like he believes a patriarch should, takes a more overtly aggressive stance with his daughters. He steals their money and treats them as if they are domestic slaves and he treats their love interests like scum. Ultimately, Reb and Carmen share in common a view that gender norms are proscribed and immutable.

The conflict between Sara and her father mirrors that of Ana and her mother. Reb and Carmen both try to control and manipulate their daughters by appealing to traditional cultural values. Gender is at the heart of their struggle, as gender norms are critical to their old-fashioned worldviews. Interestingly, there are traditionalists in both Bread Givers and in Real Women Have Curves who retain their ethnic identities while promoting gender equality. For example, Ana's grandfather relays a tale about a treasure-filled mountain in Mexico. He tells the tale to a captivated Ana before telling her that he wants Ana to "find her gold" too. Ana's father and grandfather support her academic achievements and want her to take advantage of the scholarship. In Bread Givers, Sara meets another traditional Polish-American. Although Hugo is not Jewish, he and Sara bond over their cultural identity and prove that ethnic pride does not need to clash with progressive social values.

Both Moses and Carmen directly oppose and inhibit their daughters from attending college. Their views seem ironic given the immigrant struggle to achieve the American Dream. Readers of Bread Givers and viewers of Real Women Have Curves recognize the paradox of an immigrant parent that discourages their child from achieving upward social mobility via the education system. Thus, gender is the most salient variable that causes Carmen and Moses to react vehemently to their daughters' desires. It is as if Ana and Sara struck deep chords in their parents. Their achievements symbolize change, and a break from traditional. Gender norms are fundamental to the culture; breaking gender norms symbolizes assimilation. Both Carmen and Reb fight against their daughters because they want to cling to tradition. Whether it is Reb's religious studies or Carmen's soap opera addiction, clinging to culture is one of the main themes in both stories.