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4. Comparison. In “La Gringuita,” Alvarez wrestles with her literacies in both English and
5
Spanish. Based on what you read, to what extent might she agree or disagree with a
/
mandatory requirement to study a foreign language?
5. Informing Your Argument. Return to the table that you created on page 186. Fill in the
columns about the steps that Reisberg might suggest to prevent inequality based on
language, the best evidence that illustrates those steps, and your response to what Reisberg
Narrative
is suggesting.

Source C
Santiago Baca, Jimmy. Coming into Language, 1992.

n weekend graveyard shifts at St. Joseph’s From the time I was seven, teachers had
Ohospital I worked the emergency room, been punishing me for not knowing my lessons
mopping up pools of blood and carting plastic by making me stick my nose in a circle chalked
bags stuffed with arms, legs and hands to the on the blackboard. Ashamed of not understand-
outdoor incinerator. I enjoyed the quiet, away ing and fearful of asking questions, I dropped
from the screams of shotgunned, knifed, and out of school in the ninth grade. At seventeen I
mangled kids writhing on gurneys outside the still didn’t know how to read, but those pictures
operating rooms. Ambulance sirens shrieked confirmed my identity. I stole the book that
and squad car lights reddened the cool nights, night, stashing it for safety under the slop sink
flashing against the hospital walls: gray-red, until I got off work. Back at my boardinghouse, I
gray-red. On slow nights I would lock the door showed the book to friends. All of us were
of the administration office, search the refer- amazed; this book told us we were alive. We, too,
ence library for a book on female anatomy and, had defended ourselves with our fists against
with my feet propped on the desk, leaf through hostile Anglos, gasping for breath in fights with
the illustrations, smoking my cigarette. I was the policemen who outnumbered us. The book
seventeen. reflected back to us our struggle in a way that
One night my eye was caught by a familiar- made us proud.
looking word on the spine of a book. The title Most of my life I felt like a target in the cross-
was 450 Years of Chicano History in Pictures. On hairs of a hunter’s rifle. When strangers and
the cover were black-and-white photos: Padre outsiders questioned me I felt the hang-rope
Hidalgo exhorting Mexican peasants to revolt tighten around my neck and the trapdoor creak
against the Spanish dictators; Anglo vigilantes beneath my feet. There was nothing so humiliat-
hanging two Mexicans from a tree; a young ing as being unable to express myself, and my
Mexican woman with rifle and ammunition inarticulateness increased my sense of jeopardy.
belts crisscrossing her breast; Cesar Chavez and Behind a mask of humility, I seethed with mute
field workers marching for fair wages; Chicano rebellion.
railroad workers laying creosote ties; Chicanas Before I was eighteen, I was arrested on 5
laboring at machines in textile factories; Chica- suspicion of murder after refusing to explain a
nas picketing and hoisting boycott signs. deep cut on my forearm. With shocking speed I

190
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample.
Copyright © Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers.
For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.

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