Rosario Ferré's "The Gift" Short Story
The Gift," describes a friendship between two Puerto Rican girls in a Catholic girls' school and reveals the racism and elitism in the church hierarchy and in the society. The gift is twice given and changes in symbolism from a beauty pageant prize to a simple gift of friendship to a sarcastic missive.
Puerto Ricans are still dealt with discrimination, a great deal of setbacks and downfalls, as well as issues of forced assimilation. Their high hopes of becoming successful in the United States usually came to an end after about a month or so of living in the United States when they realized it were not going to be as simple. Some Puerto Ricans went as far resulting to crime to survive. Vega states:
"
Young emigrants kept arriving from Puerto Rico full of high hopes and plans, only to find themselves facing a very hard reality. Their willpower shattered and, embittered by circumstances, they easily fell into crime... And from the moment on the words 'Puerto Rican' were associated in all the major papers with some kind of crime"(Juan Flores 1984, p.136).
The Gift uses vivid imagery to show each character's fight for their identity in the Caribbean. The last paragraph of this story after Mother Artiga had physically and mentally abused Carlotta was probably the most effective.
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