Bodega dreams setting

This final exam is worth 25 points. It concerns the Ernesto Quiñonez novel, Bodega Dreams. Please consult the book for references before you attempt to answer this assignment. Obviously, you will be using your own creativity and ability to form unique interpretations on this exam, but it still would be advisable to review the MLA method of essay writing, as well as, using in- text citations and the work cited page.

Background

The following information was originally presented in my lectures. Bodega Dreams is by Ernesto Quiñonez. Willie Bodega is the protagonist and the setting for this book is Spanish Harlem, also known as East Harlem. As the plot evolves, we begin to see the reach of migration and immigration and the web of licit and illicit activities accompanying these phenomena, as newcomers blend in with older residents. It is interesting that this main character shares bodega as a name, aligning it with the more traditional meaning in Spanish associated with a grocery store, where products from all over the world may be found. Bodega traces its roots to the Latin word for storehouse. Just as a bodega or grocery store serves the community in more ways than just providing food, the novel’s protagonist, also, offers many diverse services to the neighborhood. This is reflected in the following quote from The New York Times newspaper. “Bodega Dreams is a stark evocation of life in the projects of El Barrio.”

El Barrio, meaning neighborhood, is situated in upper Manhattan, encompassing the area north of East 96th St. on the upper eastside to approximately the 140s off Fifth Avenue going toward the East and Harlem Rivers. This area over many decades has suffered from many social issues. Public housing is plentiful denoting economic struggles and impoverishment. Hopes and dreams seem difficult to materialize due to overhanging social constructs. Yet, one of the most beautiful museums resides there projecting cultural pride from both well-known and community-based artists, who continually try, in a variety of aesthetic manifestations, to emphasize a socially conscious voice.

Course description

Now it is time to refresh our minds by going back and rereading the course description. It should offer us ideas, words and phrases that may prove useful in our essay.

This course will provide a lens into the realms of globalization in Latin America and how this area enters into and intertwines with stories of diverse Latin American/Caribbean realities. Since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, positive and negative changes have swept over the entire world and Latin American and Caribbean countries have not been exempt from these all-encompassing processes.

Although globalization has been defined in many different ways, the dynamics connected to it usually include some form of world integration, interdependency and interconnectivity. These words are frequently interpreted in an overwhelmingly economic sense, but world literature has also been affected by these global transformations in other ways. In the case of Latin American storytelling, texts involving politics, society, environment, commerce, science, and culture have expanded their regional focus to multiple geographical locations where people’s lives, families and communities have impacted and /or been impacted by this ever-changing global system. Problematic aspects as well as untold opportunities are now more in evidence in plots, characterizations, and narrative structures, foregrounding situations involving migration, immigration, neighborhood values, borders and walls, gender, the drug trade, and ecological matters, among others.