BODEGA DREAMS: PRESENTING OBSTACLES TO THE LATINO IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY

Emma has lived in Hawthorne her entire life During her time at Hawthorne High, she has consistently strived to secure good grades, be an overall good student, and set an example for underclassmen In her freshman year, she was put into the Media Arts program, which sparked the passion for her future career path in graphic design She reflects that entering Hawthorne High School was exciting but a little scary and never in a million years thought that her senior research paper would be nominated, let alone published Emma would like to thank her strong, loving, incredible mother Krista Brown who has, from the very start of her struggles, been her advocate and best friend She would also like to thank her sister Stephanie who has taken the time to proofread everything Emma has ever written, even when she was swamped with school or work, and has attended IEP meetings to help explain things Emma couldn't find the words to say Finally, she would like to thank the rest of her family for all their support while struggling with reading, writing, rhyming, etc. due to her dyslexia. Emma would like to say that she loves you all so much and wouldn’t have been able to write anything like this without you

The Latino immigrant community is no different than any other community throughout America in this respect: Everyone is trying to live out their American dream They want the best for their children, and a bright, beautiful future for their grandchildren When Ernesto Quinonez wrote Bodega Dreams, he shined a light on all that the Latino immigrant communities have to endure in their day-to-day lives. Although fiction, the book holds many true details about the life of Latino immigrant families living through poverty and hard times Bodega Dreams follows Chino, a half Puerto Rican, half Ecuadorian young man living in Spanish Harlem He narrates about his childhood, what his environment was like, his schooling, and his overall experience growing up in Spanish Harlem. Throughout Bodega Dreams there are many chapters on educational indifference as well as systemic racism, which result in these communities suffering through poverty, a lack of equity, and threats to mental health, creating serious obstacles for immigrants trying to succeed in America

For some, school can be a safe haven, a place where young people go to learn and socialize with their peers; unfortunately, for many Latino students in the 1960s, and even today, school became the opposite. In Bodega

Dreams, Chino went to Junior High 99, also referred to as “Jailhouse 99.” In the chapter “Spanish for Toad,” Chino mentions, “To the white teachers we were all going to end up delinquents”

(Quinonez 6) Unfortunately a majority of the classes in the novel were taught by teachers who lacked effort to reach the Latino students. Chino mentioned that the teachers would bluntly tell the students that they were not worth their time, stating, “I get paid whether you learn or not” (Quinonez 6). The book also highlights the few Latino teachers who tried twice as hard to teach the students, knowing they had potential If teachers treat students as delinquents from the start, that is what they will become. This is a perfect example of how the education system can fail Latino students; because of assumptions and treatment based on negative stereotypes, the students are given a lack of education.

The authors of the article “Bettering the Education System” reveal that here in America, society has a tendency to enforce certain expectations that not everyone can meet, stating “American teachers have traditional cultural views of what students should or should not do. They have an expectation of how students should look, act, talk, and learn from the dominant culture” (Viramontez et al).