Dua’a Hussein

Fatima Awad

Alexa Samano

Karolina Wojciak

American Chica:​ Rhetorical Analysis

Marie Arana is born and raised from two distinct cultures: Peruvian from her father and

American from her mother. As she grew up in Peru and lived the rest of her life in America,

Arana contemplated as to which culture and tradition she truly identifies with. In her memoir,

American Chica​, she reflects and narrates her life beginning with her parents and her traditional

beliefs that originated from Peru to accepting the differences of her culture and becoming “the

bridge” to her Peruvian and American traditions. Throughout her memoir, Arana reveals how the

idea of tradition and culture impacted her life in changing who she was, what decisions she

made, her identity, and how she lived her life as a hybrid race through the use of allusion,

diction, imagery, and metaphor.

Arana exhibits allusion several times in her memoir, mostly when her Peruvian identity is

called into question. For example, Arana mentions some of the things that Americans have said

to her, including when a boy had told her, “Remember the Alamo, then!” (286). This was as part

of a racist comment towards Arana towards her “colored” side, even though she was not

Mexican, meant to reference the Mexican American War that Mexico had lost. Despite this, she

contemplates her Peruvian identity, and afterwards decides that she would try to be more

American by studying words better to pronounce them more like an American would. This
demonstrates how Arana uses allusion to convey the effects of tradition and culture as a barrier

that changed her internal identities because even though Arana is not Mexican in root, she still

feels that she is not accepted for who she is just because she “looks” like a Mexican. This causes

her to try to act more American by pronouncing words better and following more American

traditions, forcing her attempt to suppress her Peruvian side in order to be accepted in American

society. Also throughout the book, Arana makes many references to the Peruvian side of her

family, more specifically when she talks about Pedro Pablo, a man in her family who fell from

high power due to the scandals that Julio Cesar, a slave driver out to control rubber, had caused.

The author accounts that, when it came to the mention of the rest of his family and his fall from

power, Pedro Pablo said to reporters, “Judge ​me a​ s you ​see ​me...not as you see others who bear

my name” (Arana 50). The author exhibits allusion to forward the idea of tradition and culture

affecting internal identities as Arana is aiming to inform others that they can only make

conclusions based on them seeing and getting to know her, not on what they hear about her.

People speak and make judgements about others without giving anyone the chance to get to

know that person first. This demonstrates how Arana uses allusion to convey the effects of

tradition and culture as a barrier that changed her internal identities because the belief of

judgement prior to the knowing of someone is something that still goes on today as it was passed

down through the generations. Arana wants others to come to her before they begin making

assumptions about her that may not be true. However, these allusions would not be complete

without the word choice that the author uses in order to make them stand out.
 Arana also uses diction to enhance her connection to tradition and culture as a barrier that

changes her own internal identities. As she explains her life, she talks about the Peruvian culture

in different expects which concerns her beliefs. Early in the book, Arana uses diction in order to

explain her connection to ghosts from when she was a young child, having stated, “I knew, with

a certainty I could feel in my bones, that I was deeply Peruvian...that I believed in ghosts” (7).

Arana uses diction in order to advance the thematic statement of tradition and culture affecting

the internal identities that she has because even though Arana was a young child around that

point in her life when she says this, the words that she chooses to convey her feelings, such as

“certainty,” “deeply,” and “believed” enhances her writing in order to create a sense of deep

reflection. Arana chose those words in order to get her beliefs to the reader in a way that is

deeply emotional and declares to the reader that she is who she is: a Peruvian girl. Arana

continues to use diction to talk about the effects of tradition and culture to internal identity.

When it came to the traditions of women in Peru, Arana states, “Peruvian girls were not running

about, pounding stakes into earth, tying a tepee down. They were securing respectability,

studying the polarities between Senor and Senora, grooming their lives accordingly making

themselves scarce” (144). This further exemplifies how Arana uses diction in order to advance

the connection between tradition and culture as a barrier that changes internal identities because

her word choice creates sophistication between the traditions of Peruvian culture and how it

affected Arana when she was young. Although Arana knew that she was not following the

traditions of Peruvian families, she knew that she was following the culture of her American

mother’s independence, which meant that she embraced her American side at the consequence
that it made her less Peruvian. The impact of tradition and culture is further developed in the text

with the use of imagery​.

Along with diction and allusion, Marie Arana conveys much of her life’s story by

illustrating a picture in the mind of the reader when she writes about her identities and cultures

through the use of imagery. A specific quote that Arana uses is about her father as she claimed,

“...he was in limbo — living in the country of his ancestors, speaking his language with his

children, continuing to act as if he were fully Peruvian, but his house was an alien territory”

(163). Arana uses imagery in order to show how tradition and culture shapes one’s internal

identities, because it paints a picture in the reader’s mind of a man surrounded by familiar things,

but the people around him are foreign, which demonstrates how Arana’s father, Jorge, felt when

he realized how different his children and wife are from the traditional people of Peru and

himself, making himself feel like the odd one out. The difference in tradition that Jorge saw his

children embrace from their mother made him feel like his identity was wrong. Along with this

quote, Arana uses imagery elsewhere in her memoir to describe her identity changing due to

tradition and culture, specifically when she states, “Drop four people into Peru, the saying goes,

in four different places, and thought they much touch down a few hundred miles apart, they will

think themselves in four corners of the world...Peru is a model of earthly diversities: ice Andean

peaks, dense Amazon jungle, relentlessly chapped deserts, and a coast that glistens under the

rough surf of the Pacific” (134). Throughout Peruvian culture, a saying has been passed down in

order to honor Peru and its influence to the people there, which shows how the author uses

imagery to show how tradition and culture impact one’s internal identity because this saying has
been passed down through the generations of Peruvian families as a way to celebrate the cultures

and beauty of Peru. By describing the sights and calling Peru “the world,” it creates the image of

a unified country that has a long standing history of tradition and culture that made the author

feel obligated and honored to feel more Peruvian that American.

With the use of diction, allusion, and imagery to enhance her idea of tradition and culture,

Arana also uses metaphors in her writing. For example, her American grandfather stated, “‘You

know about eagles, do you?’ he asked… ‘when they mate, they mate for life. For ​life​. If one dies,

the other won’t last very much longer. Not without the one he loves. Not long’” (Arana 208). It

was her grandfather who told her about the way that love works as, not birds, but humans. By

using this metaphor, it helps to contribute to the idea of tradition and culture affecting her life

because it is a part of the culture of Peruvians to only “mate” once in their lives, and to never

divorce. It is traditionally against the culture to divorce and marry again, and those who go

against it are seen as unacceptable in society. She continues to use metaphor, specifically in the

epilogue, when she states, “I, a north-south collision, a New World fusion. An American ​chica​.

A bridge” (Arana 305). Arana has come to terms with who she is: a mixed American-Peruvian

girl. By calling herself a bridge connecting the North and South, she is using metaphor to

demonstrate how she would not adhere to just one of her identities’, instead combining both in

order to form who she truly is. She would have both of the cultures of her heritage, acting as

what connects her mother’s side of the family to her father’s, and she continues to live as that

bridge even to this day.

 In essence, Marie Arana uses different rhetorical devices such as allusion, diction,

imagery, and metaphor, throughout her memoir as she recounts when she tried to decipher the

laws of nature to figure out how to balance and merge her American and Peruvian identities

together. The theme of tradition and culture that Arana makes reference to consistently in her

story is relevant to many immigrants and immigrant children as they try to adapt to new

environments while staying true to the roots that have been instilled into them since childhood.

By demonstrating the blurring lines between American and Peruvian culture that Arana faced as

she grew up, it demonstrates to other “dual-identity” people that it is possible to find a cohesive

balance between the identities, and that finding the identity that one is most comfortable with is

the key factor to living life to the fullest.