Week 2 Assignment – Tasmia Hasham

The text that I decided to read was Angie Martinez’s What We deserve essay. The essay was about the becoming of her mother and what she had to sacrifice to be able to give her the life that she has now. Throughout the essay, she brings up a lot of issues in the Dominican Republic with women, like how they don’t get paid as much, or they get sexually assaulted at a very young age or abused, as well as being pregnant by the age of 15 and more. She connected her mother’s story to another young girl that was the same age as her mother being taken away from her father because of ICE. She talked about how both of them worshipped away from their childhood and was forced to grow up when they shouldn’t have. She also talked about how the parents have to make very hard decisions even if it doesn’t always seem like the best. A quote from the essay that caught my eye was “So why immigrate when it’s clear that immigrant women are vulnerable and largely unprotected no matter where they go?” I thought this was very powerful because what she said was completely true, immigrant women are not protected here they are going through similar things because even though you have sent them to the U.S it doesn’t mean they’re going to be safe because we have a lot of horrible things here as well. It’s sad to say that women have to watch what they do when they are by themselves because someone can come and assault them but that’s something we have to do in order to stay safe. The reason I chose this text was just out of curiosity but I’m glad that I did. When reading this essay I was able to connect it back to my own situation because my mother had to have an arranged marriage to my father because my grandmother wanted her to have a better life and go to the U.S. reading the essay also made me really see the sacrifices that both my mother and my grandmother had to make in order to give me and my brothers better opportunities.