Week 2: Oumar Diakite

Angie Cruz’s essay “What We Deserve” reflects her family’s history and how it dictates her reaction to the separation of immigrant children from their families. She organizes her essay by using events that correspond with the photograph and the hardships of women. She explains that her mother is about to be married off against her will in hopes of starting a better life. Cruz shows how this is similar to immigrant children being separated from their parents, also against their will and forced to live with decisions that are made for them. Cruz then goes on to question why families would force their children, their daughters to marry at young ages just to experience mistreatment in another country. Cruz goes further into the hardships of women by including how her mother contributed immensely to the survival of her family. By using these events Cruz is able to create a  realization that these kids who are torn from their families due to circumstance need to be taken care of. She also shows that the vulnerabilities of women are still very much real today. She accomplishes this by sharing that “one in four girls are sexually abused; one in six women are victims of attempted raper or rape.” This shows that young women who are separated from their families could end up as one of these statistics. Cruz’s political views are very much connected to her family history since her mother has experienced separation.