assignment #7

Before my essay is read I want you to know, I truly didn't know how to start or what to write. I went to the writing center and got very much needed help. I am working on it.

Taking of Reasonability

Quinceañera is a popular celebration in the Latin culture. It’s a daughter’s transformation from child hood to woman hood. The celebration is a moment for both mother and daughter. The mother helps the daughter into the transformation as she has been saving and planning for this day since her daughter was a baby. Hair nails, dress, shoes, are all-important factors in the celebration. Now is the time of age men will want to marry and have children. Friends and family go into a catholic church for a ceremony. The priest talks of becoming a woman and he blesses her life as a woman now that she is fifteen years old. All the things the Quinceañera’s past possession of being a child now are gone and should always be kept in the past. The father also plays a small role usually if the girl is still a virgin; he dances a song that symbolizes their love. Now she can give her virginity and he will no longer be her protector. Who’s to say when you’ve truly turned into a woman, fifteen is a young. The Latin culture will assume you can take care of yourself and the responsibilities life comes with.

Why are mother’s so anxious for their daughter to make this drastic transformation at the age of fifteen? Mothers want their daughters to marry at such a young age and then have children who are usually grown into poverty. They wont have a degree or a job to support them so they will find a man to live off of. This is what they learn from their mothers, which did it to them. Mothers just pass on tradition and have the celebration for their daughters.

In a Quinceanera the girl has 14 couples, which represent one year in the girls life before transforming into a woman. They serve her through out the ceremony and party. They dance with her songs symbolizing her coming out. Everyone treats her, as a princess on her day. She even wears a tiara given by her parents.

All Latin women do not want transformation at such a tender age. “ My dolls have been put away like dead children in a chest I will carry with me when I marry” (page 640). So much from the past will be taking away. Now you have to act a certain way. What you wear is also important during the ceremony at the church you are wearing sandals but will be taken off, and you are given heels to wear through out the whole night during the celebration. The way you’ve worn you hair as a child will also change.” My hair has been nailed back with my mothers black hairpins to my skull. Her hands stretched my eyes open as she twisted braids into a tight circle at the nape of my neck”(page 640-641). The way you look will attract men. You will eventually meet one, if you want you can marry and have children. Now you are a woman and that is expected of you.

A lot of anxiety is felt during the day of the quinces, not only about how you are suppose to look but about the responsibility you are going to take on. “I am wound like the guts of a clock, waiting for each hour to release me”(page 641). She wants the ceremony to go be quick so she can be done and over with what her family has been waiting so long for. Judith Ortiz Cofer uses a lot of imagery in the poem she wants you to actually visualize what and how things happen in preparing for that day. The author says” I am to wash my own clothes and sheets from this day on, as if the fluids of my body were poison, as if the little trickle of blood I believe travels from my heart to the world were shameful”(page 641). She feels unloved in some way because things that were done for her before will not be done for her now, because of her age she is now treated different as if what came out of her isn’t that same anymore.

Even though this transformation from a child to woman is a tradition, and to many is a very special moment in their lives its not something every daughter wants to be part of. Fifteen is a young age to take on what the world has to offer. You will be barley out of high school. Most of the women will be jobless and struggling to take care of themselves. You will mature whether you like it or not, your family and friends will treat you as an adult from the day forward.