Annotated Bibliography Assignment

By Evelyn Ramirez-Mancilla, Julissa and Evelyn's Project

 1. Mardorossian, Carine. "From Literature of Exile to Migrant Literature." 32.2 (2002): 15-33. JSTOR. Web. 16 Nov. 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/3252040>.

 Mardorossian, aims to discover the reasons behind the shift in using the  term "exile" to "migrant" in literature. She questions the public categorization of migrant literature.  Why is it that we confuse "migrant" and "exile" literature ?  How is this significant? Mardorossian answers this question by comparing two contemporary Caribbean novels that track the experiences of two protagonist after coming to the United States. Mardorossian identifies the concepts of "home", "resisitance", and "belonging" as vital to literary works that use the terms  "exile" and "migrant".  Mardorossian theorizes that not being able to distinguish the differences between these shared concepts may lead to a  miscategorization of exile literature. Ultimately, she concludes that the shift/miscategorization of  "exile" to "migrant" literature occurs as result of cliches and present day conditions.

2. Suarez-Orozco, Carola, and Desiree Baolian Qin. "Gendered Perspectives In Psychology: Immigrant Origin Youth." International Migration Review: 165-98. Print.

This article, reviews studies that focus on the experience of children and adolescent immigrants. The authors believe that psychologists have failed to foreground the role of gender in immigration studies. As a result, the authors examine the Familial relations,well-being, educational outcomes, and identity formations of immigrant children based on gender. While conducting their research they discover that "sociologists and anthropologists have provided a great deal of insight into the gendered experience of migration for adult women" (185). This discovery reinforces their belief that it is vital to conduct psychological research on the emotional  and cognitive perspectives of migrant children. Although  Suarez-Orozco, Carola, and Baolian do not come to a general conclusion on the emotional and cognitive perspectives of make and female migrant children, they do believe "that it is important to consider socioeconomic characteristics; to consider resilience as well as pathology; and to work in interdisciplinary ways to deepen our understanding of the gendered migratory experience of immigrant origin youth".

3. Cortez-Davis, Evelyn. "Echoes." December Sky: Beyond My Undocumented Life. N.p.: In Xochitl in Cuicatl Productions, 2005. 17-31. Print.

Cortez-Davis retells her immigrating experience from  El Salvador to the United States. In its entirety the  book provides vivid  descriptions of El Salvador during the civil war, the dangerous trip to the United States and how she  adapted. The chapter, “Echos”( Pg.17-31)  describes how the atmosphere in El Salvador forced Cortez-Davis to leave. Through the first person narrative, Cortez-Davis offers a graphic depiction of violence, bloodshed, and  brutality. As her thoughts and reaction to the events are revealed to the reader;an intimacy and connection is created. As a result, readers can easily comprehend the fear and trauma inflicted by the political situation in El Salvador. By making the text personal and not just retelling the historical account, readers can empathize with the motive to immigrate.

4. Sepulveda, Emma. Amigas: Letters of Friendship and Exile. By Marjorie Agosin. Austin: U of Texas, 2001. 57-72. Print.

This book is a long collection of letters that  testify the strength of  Sepulveda and Agosin’s  friendship and commemorate their exile experiences.  The political atmospheres in their countries, made these two ethnically distinct pen pals abandon their home and immigrate to the United States. Pages 57-72 retell the exact moment that made Sepulveda realize her life was in danger in Chile.  Throughout the book, religion,family and cultural values shape the writing of Sepulveda and Agosin.  In pages 57-72, the letters no longer view the political tensions through these values. Instead, Sepulveda disregards them in order to look out for her well being and abandon Chile. The language used to describe and examine the decisions Sepulveda must make emphasis a transition into adulthood and makes her motives for migrating credible.

5. Kanellos, Nicola. Hispanic Immigrant Literature: El Sueño Del Retorno. 1.st ed. Austin: U of Texas, 2011. Print.

This book analyzes the meaning of immigration in literature. It is based on an archive in the Hispanic Literary Heritage project. Using this archive Kanellos creates an argument for his definition of immigrant literature. He defines immigrant literature,"as literature written by immigrants in their native language" (9). This means that works written by Sandra Cisneros, Luis Valdez, Pedro Pietri and Ana Castillo cannot be categorized as immigrant literature because all these authors were born in the United State and write in English. According to Kanellos, the literary works that these authors create are classified under the native literature instead of immigrant or exile. In the book, Kanellos’ compares native and exile literature with immigrant literature to strengthen his immigrant literature definition. He discusses origin and language, and the outlooks the characters have of the U.S. play a huge role in categorizing the literary position of Hispanic authors. Ultimately Kanellos', provides an in depth discussion of the important differences between immigrant,native and exile literature.

6. Roth, Steffen. "Fashionable Functions: A Google Ngram View of Trends in Functional Differentiation (1800-2000)." International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction. 2nd ed. Vol. 10. 2014. 34-58. Print.

This article discussed how digital humanities tools have revolutionized the analysis of writing. More specifically, it discussed the way Google Ngram has contributed to this revolution by helping researchers create hypothesis.  Roth describes Google Ngram as, "an online graphing tool which charts annual counts of words or sentences as found in the largest available corpus of digitalized books – allows for checks and challenges of familiar self-definitions of modern society".  In this work he discusses that it is important that Ngram is  available because it helps researchers create hypothesis based on the trends they observe/ develop with this tool.   Roth continues discussing that the tool is a great visual aid to compare the political, economic, and media in society.  Ultimately Roth believes that Google Ngram's ability to be compared to other content makes it an excellent tool to challenge and understand many of societies definitions.

7. "Google Ngram Viewer." Google Ngram Viewer. Google, 1 Jan. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2014. <https://books.google.com/ngrams/info>.

This article, explains the purpose and uses of Google Ngram. Google Ngram is a digital humanities tool that allows you to track the frequency of words or phrases in Google's corpus of books. Once you have chosen the phrases you would like to search; Google Ngram provides a series of tags to specify the type of paradigms someone would want in their research. More specifically, the articlegives an example of the  "=>" tag. This tag make create an Ngram that shows the dependency certain word have with one another. The article elaborates," Let's say you want to know how often tasty modifies dessert. That is, you want to tally mentions of tasty frozen dessert, crunchy, tasty dessert, tasty yet expensive dessert, and all the other instances in which the word tasty is applied to dessert. For that, the Ngram Viewer provides dependency relations with the => operator:".