I denne study guide kan du få hjælp til at analysere teksten "Coming to America, to clean" af Ana Maria Corona. Udover analysehjælpen kan du finde et summary af teksten, samt idéer til diskussion og perspektivering.
Præsentation af teksten
Titel: “Coming to America, to clean” (1993)
Forfatter: Ana Maria Corona
Genre: Biografisk essay
"Coming to America, to clean" blev udgivet i Harper's Magazine i 1993. Teksten har også været en del af Like a Flower in the Dust: What They Really Think While They Wax Your Floor – en samling af personlige beretninger fra illegale indvandrere med arbejde inden for husholdning og rengøring i San Diego, som blev publiceret i San Diego Reader.
Teksten her er en fortælling om en mexicansk kvinde ved navn Antonia, som på daværende tidspunkt arbejdede illegalt i USA.
Uddrag
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Metaphors and similes
The text includes several similes and metaphors that make the language more appealing and help readers create associations.
The simile “ ‘Like a flower in the dust,’ ” (p. 33, l. 1) describes Antonia living in Mexico. It is meant to suggest that life is so bad in Mexico that Antonia would be wasting herself is she stayed there. Another simile is: “We walked across the weeds like we were strolling through a park” (p. 34, ll. 3-4). The simile is used to outline how easy it was to cross the border illegally to the US.
After crossing the border and meeting her employers, Antonia describes her rush of adrenaline using the following simile: “I felt like I'd jumped off a bridge and was washing down the river” (p. 34, ll. 52-54). The simile has the effect of appealing to readers’ emotions, making them more likely to empathise with Antonia especially since it evokes a suicide attempt as a term of comparison for what she is feeling.
