User:Jmartinez0613/Amada Irma Perez

Lead
Perez’s literary works expand on her own experiences as a Latina woman. All of her books are written from the first-person perspective of a young girl who has just emigrated to the United States. The book My Diary From Here to There/Mi Diario de aqui hasta alla illustrates the journey across the US-Mexico border while My Very Own Room/Mi propio cuarto is set in the traditional large Mexican household. Rather than telling the story from an outside perspective, Perez present her target audience with a character that is not only relatable but more interesting to them.

Immigration
Immigration is a consistent theme throughout all of Perez’s text. She uses her own immigration experience to normalize this journey and give readers and opportunity to connect to the text. The family at the center of all of Perez’s works is one that recently made the journey across the US-Mexico border. In My Diary from Here to There, the young girl who is narrating the story writes about feelings of sadness and fear towards leaving her home in Mexico. Some of the other concerns she voices include not being able to speak in her native tongue, worrying about whether she will ever see her best friend again and if her family will ever get the chance to return to Mexico. Through My Diary From Here to There, Perez shows the story of an entire family coming to the United States legally, as they were waiting on green cards while the Father worked in fields. Perez’s work is attempting to relate and represent young children who share the experiences of the main character. In older Mexican literature, children felt they were being presented with lectura over literature, or scholarly material over recreational reading. With these books, Perez makes efforts to appeal to her audience by telling the story through her younger self’s perspective.

Writings about the Borderlands
In My Diary From Here to There, the line “We drove right along the border, across from New Mexico and Arizona. Mexico and the U.S. are two different countries, but they look exactly the same on both sides of the border, with giant saguaros pointing up at the pink-orange sky and enormous clouds.” Readers are presented with a description of this borderland space from the eyes of a child and end up with a point of view that does not recognize the difference in the spaces. This also illustrates young Amada’s feelings of conflict towards leaving her family home in Juarez, Mexico. Throughout this text, Young Amada mentions the opportunities her family will have after moving, but it does not seem like she understands what this means. The works of Gloria Anzaldua make the experience of a Latina women to be “an inner war” while she struggles with both cultures, also characterizing this feeling as a choque or crash. As young Amada is just entering the new country and has not yet experienced the cultural collision, and therefore is unaware of the border will have on her. The character’s experience, or lack thereof, speaks on the difficulty recently emigrated individuals may experience upon starting life in the United States such as having to work through language barriers or not having enough social or emotional support.