Research Paper on:
2 Narratives on the Latina Experience

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
present powerful and poignant narratives that outline aspects of Latina experience. While the stories are radically different in tone and context, an underlying theme that can be discerned in each  narrative is that the strength of the Latina culture originates within familial relationships and custom. In Benitezs account of Marta Rodriguez, this message is also supplemented by the subtle  warning that ignoring this cultural foundation incorporates considerable risk to the foundation of Latina character. Marta is a young woman in a difficult situation. At the opening of this excerpt,  she comes to the village wise woman, Remedios, for help in changing the mind of her brother-in-law, Cande, who she mistakenly feels is reneging on a promise to raise her  unborn child. Martas rejection of her baby is undoubtedly tied to the fact that she was raped. Not only was she violated, but even her own family does not  believe her account of what happened -- "She could tell it in their eyes" and also "in the fact that her story had not raised their indignation" (Benitez 51). Feeling  herself "ruined," Marta has devised a plan for a new life, one that does no include a baby. She plans to journey north to El Paso, leaving her child to  be raised by her sister and brother-in-law. However, Remedios warns her against this course of action, saying that, in the north, "girls like you are lost. It is a place  that hardens and ruins girls like you" (Benitez 52). The warning implies that, by abandoning everything she knows, her background, her culture, Marta will metaphorically lose her way, lose  the person that she is at that moment. Marta protests that she is "ruined" already, an assessment to which Remedios disagrees (Benitez 52). What is clear is that the