Robert Kaplan did an excellent job of painting a mental picture of the places he saw. The details on random plants – juniper, sage brush, and maquiladora – discriptions of the geometry involved in buildings, and when speaking of boys kicking a soccer ball on a roof, he points out that it was a scrap-metal roof. All the little details added here and there gave a clear sense of the authors vision. When writing on the Spanish speaking Americans in Nogales, Arizona, he wrote of the way they appeared to dress, the way they appeared to walk, and the way they carried physicaly carried themselves in conversation. He views being modern as being sterile, robotic, and sheltered. Mexico is crooked yet lively; America is stable and straight, yet as he wrote, “Insulated.” The choice of words seems deliberate. Insulation is placed around something in order to keep something, usually the cold, on the outside, while keeping heat inside. The implication of this is obvious, we keep “aliens” out and keep “americans” inside.
I found the idea of America as sterile flowed very well, in my mind, into the next essay, “Champion of the World”. Kaplan’s essay was largely visual, statistical, and factual, and when juxtaposed with Angelou’s writing, it really gives her words a heavy sense of feeling behind them! Even though Angelou’s essay was still heavy on the visuals – kitchen chairs, babies on laps, men leaning on shelves, and upturned wooden boxes – the emotions really came through in the dialogue. Visually, I can see the room she is speaking of in my mind, but emotionally, I can feel the tension, followed by an overhwhelming release! “We didn’t breathe. We Didn’t hope. We Waited.” Just reading those words makes you want to hold your breath.
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