Izote Vos Reflection

I particularly enjoyed reading the pieces off the Izote Vos website. All of the writers were about the same age, and we easy to understand where their opinions were coming from. Most of their stories talked about the same hardships throughout immigrant life. Troubles included poverty, parental sacrifice, and family ties. Each family had to make huge sacrifices and endure much suffering in order to truly become a part of American society. Some related their identities to lacking quality of life and poor material conditions. Often the immigrant families feel they are supposed to be poor, suffer losses, feel anger, and basically be the minority, literally.
The Izote Vos readings related a lot to the "Becoming Somebody" article written by Marcelo Suarez-Orozco. Many of the immigrant students felt compelled to excel in American schools in order to repay their families for their sacrifices. Both the parents and the students were driven by a perception of opportunity in a new land. Often an entire family would immigrate in order for the children to have better opportunities for education. The parents often held multiple low-paying jobs to provide enough.
The fact that parents would sacrifice so much for their children is amazing, but I suppose all American parents feel the need to "make sure their kids are better off than they were."
Veronica Blattner