. ." which offers a tongue-in-cheek 'guide' to the different facades required for dating different types of girls. The chapter highlights the impact of cultural differences in constructing impressions but, perhaps more importantly, demonstrates the extent to which the narrator feels he must go to conceal the most embarrassing dimensions of his family's poverty. Here, the narrator begins the chapter by advising, "clear the government cheese from the refrigerator.

However, this may not have been Diaz's intention at all. He may have simply been trying to emphasize the third person viewpoint and that the reader is merely witnessing the events. This opening statement requires the reader to place themselves in a position somewhere, hovering above the lives of the characters, viewing them from an unattached vantage point. This is much the way in which one views an ant hill.

One can see many similarities between the two characters. However, there are also difference in their attitudes towards their future. Yunior sees the future as bleak, largely due to his father's actions and the effect that he knows it will have on the family. Annie sees her family as representative of her security in childhood. Annie grows up in a proper world, where the father embodies the perfect father figure,

Latino Literature: Opposing Traditional Values Course Extractions There are several different facets of Latino literature that I am familiar with today that I was previously unaware of. Most of these are related to the variety of themes that recur in various manifestations throughout this genre of literature. The most fundamental aspect of learning that I have come away from this course with is that in this particular type of literature, themes and

Down These Mean Streets believe that every child is born a poet, and every poet is a child. Poetry to me was always a very sacred form of expression. (qtd. In Fisher 2003) Introduction / Background History Born Juan Pedro Tomas, of Puerto Rican and Cuban parents in New York City's Spanish Harlem in 1928, Piri Thomas began his struggle for survival, identity, and recognition at an early age. The vicious street