Immigrant: Personal Narrative Analysis

My history alines with that of a long time immigrant, my grandparents came from two different worlds. My grandfather’s parents migrated from Spain around the time when war was happening around the world. His mother moved to Mexico, seeking a better future for her son, and eventually my grandfather met my grandmother. The mother of my grandmother on the other hand was indigenous, they lived in Mexico for generations. My grandmother was raised hearing stories from her grandmother, of when they would have to hide in caves because the Mexican army would come and kick them out of their land and steal their food. As the story goes, my great-great-grandmother had to continually search for a way to survive in rural Mexico because she had no money and food was scarce. This was due to the fact that the Mexican army continually took advantage because they were aware that their people were malnourished and could not fight back against their maltreatment. After my grandmother began to have children, my grandfather would migrate between the United States and Mexico to work, but he would consistently leave his children, and my grandmother. …show more content…
Eventually, my grandmother would be stuck with nine children alone in Mexico, because my grandfather would not take care of any of them nor provide financially for them. Until recently I learned my grandmother was a victim of emotional abuse for years. An example of this is my grandfather took my grandmother from her mother, threatening to kill her family if she didn’t come with him. Unfortunately even today my grandfather continually disrespects my grandmother calling her foul names, if something does not go his way, but she refuses to leave him. My mother later on was also a victim of domestic abuse by the father of her second child, who would continually hit her, until one day she decided to walk away after several years. Its fair to say that my research project emerges from my own history with dealing with domestic violence within my family. My family history became the engine of my project, it is the reason I even choose to work with victims of domestic violence. I think its important to work with these victims on a personal level because I know what it is like to be the child in a situation, where you have no control over your parent getting hurt, or abused in front of you, so you just hide. This kind of trauma does not go away, even if it happened when you were a child, even now I always am extra careful when a male playfully pushes me or something of sort. This is because of the abuse I saw as a child inflicted on my mother, which gives me the fuel and motivation to go through with my project working with the indigenous community. But I think what grabbed my attention was when we had a speaker in class, come and speak about the injustices committed against women, who are raped, or victims of domestic abuse, especially around the Canada and the United States border. It is extremely difficult for them to get the resources need to help them heal them from such traumatic experiences. This presenter made me remember the domestic abuse that took place within my immediate family, and this sparked a recent fire, that I did not know I had. In general the Native American population does not have enough resources available to them, or enough volunteers to help them deal with the victims of domestic abuse. …show more content…
The facts speak for themselves, Native women experience rates of violent victimization double than that among all women, they experience it at a higher rate than any other U.S. population. These facts are staggering but they’re a sad reality for many Native women. Tribal law and regular law often create conflict for women who want to tell on those who assaulted them because many laws do not coordinate with each other. Another important fact is that sometimes tribes do not let regular law enforcement get involved within their tribal affairs, making it more difficult to find justice for victims. The fact that this is a reality for so many people, created the motivation for me to go into indigenous research. After listening to our classroom conversation about research within indigenous communities, I have decided I am