Mexican Family Relationship

The family relationship and the sense of community that Viola Canales portrays in her novel, it is founded on Mexican culture, as such I felt identified with it. In this essay, I will compare Sofia’s childhood relationship with Mexican traditions and customs, and her relationship with her parents with mine. I was surprising to me how easily her family kept in touch with their roots, since I grew up in Mexico, one would think the customs and traditions of my country would have been present in my life without effort, but the truth is my parents never instilled me most of it, they worked all week, almost all day, making it impossible for us to have family time until I was in middle school, but the feel of community, which in my opinion is the main base of our country and its culture, was something I learned during this time. Our neighbors always received me with open arms when my parents were busy, even though, due to time restrain my parents never actually got to meet them, they still treated me like family just because we happen to live in the same neighborhood, in our street there were always carnes asadas (in the north of Mexico, carnes asadas are common, but not in the rest of the country) and people gather them to give food to everybody, from homeless people to Central American immigrants that didn’t have where to stay, helping each other has always been big part of my community, and Canales portrays this in a sense of comadrismo although all her book, one passage in particular sums it up perfectly, “… realizing that everyone is special and often quite different from you. And that if you want to connect with them, to love them, you need to figure out how they feel.” (Canales, 68) I think that description is the base of comadrismo, although, nowadays the term is not as used as much as it used to be. My grandmother still calls her friends comandres, but my mom doesn’t, I know that now it doesn’t receive that name, but I am glad is still present in our culture. When it comes to family, Sofia and I shared the bond with our parents, but especially the relationship that resonates more with me is the one between her and her father, especially in this stage of my life. My parents married very young and they worked hard until they achieved their goals, but while my mother have been raised in Reynosa, my father grew up in Sinaloa and thus he was very homesick in the beginning, not for his family, but for his community in his town. I remember hearing him talk about it like something important that words could not describe, when Sofia hears her father talking about their roots, it reminded me about how I felt when my dad talked about his town, like how Sofia stated in the book, “Sometimes I thought Papa was from another world, especially when he talked like this.” (Canales, 35) while she was referring to Mexican traditions as opposed to American traditions, for me it was the differences between our communities, even though in essence, it was similar ( a community taking care of each other) the way he described his, was more related to the fact they raised him (they enroll him in soccer, teach him how play and take him to the park) they were his family, and although I loved my community, I didn’t stay with them for long, and I didn’t consider them family. When it comes to my personal relationship with my dad, our relationship is summed up perfectly with Sofia’s description of her relationship with her dad, (we even cleaned pinto beans together …show more content…
Luckily, my relationship with my mother is also a healthy and strong one, while we are very different when it comes to our personalities, that hasn’t been an obstacle for us, on the contrary, I have learned a lot from her and how she approaches things, she is a risk taker and she has always inspired me and supported me to do the …show more content…
I think this day is important because is a way to honor our dead with a