Destiny Sargent

The poems, '"The Mexicanos lynched in Santa Cruz, California, "The Revolutionary Spanish Lesson", and "The New Bathroom Policy at English High School" by Martin Espada make the reader think of how Mexicans experience discrimination. Martin Espada's point of view was to get readers to feel his anger by showing proof of how Latinos were being treated back then and now. The poems all show discrimination against someone and want the reader to get the feeling of what this means.

 

The poem "New Bathroom Policy at English High School," makes me feel that people should have the right to do anything they were born to. If somebody had banned something from me, I would feel disappointed. It's not fair and I think it's a privilege that people should be able to speak out their feelings.  In the poem, "The principal overheard two students in the bathroom talking in Spanish, and the one word he could make out was his name. " He assumed that they were talking badly about him, so he banned Spanish in the bathrooms.

In Espada's poem "Revolutionary Spanish Lesson," it makes the reader think about how people don't like to be disrespected. I think that the speaker's name means something to him the he gets mad when someone mispronounces his name. In the text it says, "I want to buy a toy pistol…..put on dark sunglasses." He wants to respond like a revolutionary- like a Che Guevara. He wants to do something crazy when somebody disrespects him. This shows that people don't like to be disrespected and feel that everyone deserves respect.

This poem "Two Mexicanos," makes the reader think about racism and how people get treated because of their race. Espada starts describing the lynching, "More than the moment when forty vigilantes cheered the rope that snapped two Mexicanos into the grimacing sleep of broken necks." What bothers him the most is described in the last stanza, "Remain the faces of the lynching party." This bothers Espada because of the fact they took a picture of what they've done. I don't think that was fair because everyone deserves to be treated the same way as you want to be treated. In the story it says "Two Mexicanos were being lynched by forty gringo vigilantes."  They were lynched without getting the same treatment when breaking the law.  The vigilantes took justice into their own hands.   This shows that people were racist in the past and are still treating other people differently than what they should be treating them.

 

These poems are all the same in different ways. They all show how treating someone differently by their race is a cruel thing to do. Nobody deserves discrimination or being treated poorly. disrespect because of race is wrong. Espada expresses his feelings about the unjust lynching of the two Latinos in "Two Mexicanos."  He expresses his feelings about discrimination of Latinos in "New Bathroom Policy," and "Revolutionary Spanish Lesson." These poems make sure that people today understand they should stand for what's right and speak up to what's wrong.