fact that Mami won’t come back / Diane thinks about going to the Boston Arts Academy / Eric gets deported / Papi and Mami start working harder to become citizens / Diane gets an audition at the BAA

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FULL COMMENT
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The first major event is when Diane’s mom gets deported. This event

affected Diane’s entire family. Diane became sad and started to
dislike her mother. Papi also got angry at Mami and Eric. Eric
started arguing and getting into conflicts with Papi. These events
stressed DIane out at first but helped her become more resilient and
independant in the future. Mami was sent to Colombia. She was sad at
first but became happier thanks to her relatives’ hospitality and
begged Diane to come live with her. Two months later, Mami moved back
into the US and moved back into the house. Papi wasn’t thrilled at
first but started planning to move to New Jersey. A week after Mami
came back, she got arrested again while walking the neighbors’ kids to
school.

Papi didn’t want to get deported so he rented a basement

apartment from Olivia, who had been a friend for years. The apartment
was so small that the family had to either sell or get rid of most of
their belongings. Eric had already moved to New Jersey to start a new
life. The living conditions in this apartment were terrible and had a
large impact on Papi and Diane. Papi hit the lowest point in his life
(so far) and had to work even longer to support Mami in Colombia,
Diane, and himself. Diane also got depressed and her grades slip.
Acording to Diane, her family was trapped in a “living nightmare”. She
started to go through puberty in 7th grade. She had to buy bras and
period pads with her dad. During this time, Papi and Diane accepted
the fact that Mami wasn’t going to come back and focused on living the
life that they had. Some time later, Eric was attacked by a group of men and injured them while defending himself. He went to court where his lawyer told him to sign a paper because it was “the best legal strategy”. This led to him getting deported to Colombia. This made the family sad at first but let them spend more time and give more to Diane. Papi and Mami didn’t want to lose Diane, so they started working even harder to pay for a lawyer and citizenship. When Papi went to his “lawyer”/s office, he found out that the lawyer was a fraud and that he had just lost thousands of dollars. A week later, Diane got an audition for the Boston Arts Academy. This is significant because it lets Diane be successful in life and gives her place where she can be friends with people who are like her.

In the book, Diane explained how her family raised her in Catholic like most Colombians. In Catholic there is the Rosary, holy water, confessions, the then commandments. Although her parents weren’t super devoted themselves but she had taken the “Good Catholic Girl” to another level. Her dad had been handing money to their lawyer but there weren’t any results. Her mother had reached out to a lawyer that did promised her to give her the green card so she been submitting papers for the agency to file on her behalf with the federal government. One day after school, Diane came home to find that her mom had been taken by Immigration. According to Eric, her little brother, she had been pull over by an officer but it wasn’t an ordinary police officer it was an Immigration officer. Even though Diane was going trough some rough time, she always said she was fine, but one of her closet friends actually knew what happened. Her mom had offered her to come to Colombia with she said no, she said she wanted to stay with her dad.

Her mom came back to the US after some times and she had been arrested again. Her dad didn’t want to get deported so he rented a basement. It was so small that they has to get rid of most of their belongings. Her brother Eric has moved to New Jersey. Her dad was also continuing to work to support her mother in Colombia. Diane, herself wasn’t at the point of her life either because she became depressed and her grades drop dramatically. At times, Diane and her father got used to the facts that her mother wasn’t living with them no more.Eric got himself into a fight and his lawyer had him sign a paper because it was supposed to the best legal strategy which led him to get deported back to Colombia. They found out that the lawyer was a fraud and they had lost thousands of dollars for nothing. Not so long after this incident,Diane got an audition at the Boston Arts Academy. After all this things that happened, nothing has ever been the same since. I feel like Diane used those bad things that happened in her life to fuel herself with positive energy and being grateful.

When reading about Diane’s hardships as an illegal immigrant living in the united state. It felt like her life was riddled with series of unfortunate events. With the most major one as of recently being the deportation of her mom. This came as complete surprise to the family and rocked there entire family structure. Having mami taken away from her left Diane feeling sad and hopeless she was worried about if they would come back for the rest of them and she was obliviously very worried about if she’d ever get her mom again. Above all else she knew that since Mami was gone she’d have to step up and shoulder the responsibility of stopping Eric and Papi’s fights. Diane"s story reminds me of another coming of age story called esperanza rising. The story of Hispanic girl who lived with her family on their ranch in Mexico, and grew up living a very fancy life style she had fancy dresses, a beautiful home, and servants. She grew up living this way her entire life and thought this was the way things were always going to be But a tragedy forces Esperanza and her Mama to flee to California during the Great Depression, and to settle in a camp for Mexican farm workers. Being put in this position forced esperonsa to toughen up and get rid of her selfish princes ideals to become a strong provider for her family. although the story is different the themes of family and the immigrant experience stays the same. I infer that moving forward Diane will work harder to step up in place of her mom and try as hard as possible to keep her family together.

Over the course of chapters 4-6 Diane has to go through some major events. The first major event is when Diane’s mom had just gotten deported. When that occured it not only affected Diane, it had affected her family as well. Diane was devastated by this event, she quickly became very sad and stressed. At first she really didn’t know how things would turn out with her mother gone. Also Diane’s father had been fighting with her mother and brother because of the situation that occured. Even with all the stress being thrown Dianes way she was able to adapt and become more independent. Soon her mother was able to return and they were ecstatic yet Diane’s father wasn’t that thrilled, but all good things couldn’t last. A week after Diane’s mother returned she was quickly arrested while walking the neighbor’s kids, then sent to be deported .Trying not to be under ICE’S radar Diane’s father had moved them into a small basement, due to the size they could not keep all of their belongings. Also by that point Eric had decided to move to New Jersey. Living in the basement, and with the stress of everything going on her father had hit his lowest and was really hard to help support Diane’s mother in Colombia. Diane now had hit depression,her grades slipped and she had just hit puberty.Things for awhile were stable until they found out that the lawyer who they gave thousands to just basically stole their money and skipped out of the state, this hit them hard. Diane felt bad not only for herself but for her father. Yet I guess god had given her a gift because a week after that occured she gotton a chance for the audition at Boston Arts Academy. She was definetally excited/nervous but the events that were occuring stayed in the back of her head. She had completed the competition even with all that was happening at the time she got accepted into Boston Arts Academy, she couldn’t have been more ecstatic of how far she has come. This gave Diane a place like home, a perfect world for a bit, in which gave her some of the things she has today.
Like Diane’s story I have read a similar book like hers, yet it was based off of true scenarios, that were turned into a fictional story. The book was Amal Unbound. In this story Amal is a 12 year old girl Pakistanian girl with a dream of becoming a teacher yet that dream would soon come to an end. Due to Amal “disrespecting” the town’s “Landlord” she was forced to work for the “landlord” to pay off her “debt” with many other servants similar to her. Amal was taken away from her education, family, and past life. During the time Amal lived as a servant she served the “landlord’s” Mother. Running her bath fetching her meals, going with her to shop,and waiting for her while the mother chatted with friends. This may not seem all bad but she could not express her opinion, talk back, she had to eat and sleep in servants quarters. Also once she was tricked into walking into a “market”, that market did not exist so when she returned she was punished by a hard slap. Even through the hardships Amal began to open her eyes to the two different worlds there are through the people she works for and the friends/coworkers she has met along the way. That even the life for rich folk was hard, plus the people who were abandoned/given away. Soon after the “landlord” was apprehended Amal was then determined to get back to her family with her newly found strength and knowledge she headed on her way home.

One significant event that happened to Diane was that her mother got deported for the first time. This event caused her to take responsibility and butt in every time her father and brother would fight, she felt that she must be responsible to stop the arguing and fighting to not cause any more problems. Another significant event was that when she had her period, this is also significant as her mother was deported for the second time. When she had her period she was in a emotional state because of her unusual situation where she was staying at a close friends house and her mother was absent. This just goes to show that Diane was going through puberty and was in a very fragile state of her life in which her mother wasn’t there for her due to an unfortunate event.

This coming of age story reminds me of a book called Esperanza Rising. In the story Esperanza abandons her home and rich life in hope of a safer environment, in doing so she learns to grow up. How this relates to Diane is that both of them find that they both have responsibilities as well as they were both in a fragile state and were experiencing hardships. In Esperanza, she learns that not everything is a given right, that sometimes you have to work for it. In Diane’s coming of age, though she already know this, she works hard to get what she wants and the both of them know/start to realize the world isn’t as dandy as it is. For Diane, it was her mother going in and out of America, for Esperanza, it was when she went from riches to rags.

Diane is a catholic, she had to follow the rules of this religion and she also had her first communion. Her father came back to the U.S, her mom came back only sometimes. Things got harder for their family and they found out that the attorney that they hired was a fraud. Even though after her first communion she had to went through all of this negative events, she still managed to be okay. She graduated eighth grade and audition for an art school. She felt like getting into this school was just like being at home. There she could expressed herself and she felt like she fit in. She valued every seconds of her life like gold, this was a way of her focusing on success. She still had hope for a better life and she believed that she could make this change happened. I believed this is why she kept pushing herself to be great.

I’m catholic and I also had my first communion. I’ve been living without my mother for 4 years and I’m living with a father which is so strange. I’m an immigrant and I’m legal. This doesn’t mean that a deportation could be stop. A deportation may not be able to hurt me emotionally but for my parents yes. My mother accepted me coming to this country because she wants me to have a better life and not be exposed to all of the danger in my country . Over the past years I’ve been in pain because I miss her and well my life is complicated. I manage my pain every single day, I always try to escape it. I feel like I don’t fit in here in the USA but when I’m with my friends this doesn’t exist no more. I can be myself, I don’t have to force it so that I can fit in and they are a reminder of home. There’s nothing better than being reminded of home when you don’t fit in no where. So I think me and Diane responds well to hard situations in life because the obstacles taught us that not having a balance life is a threat.

The important major event is when Diane’s mom gets deported. The event
affected Diane’s entire family. Diane became sad and really affected she started to dislike her mother. Papi also got angry at Mami and Eric. Eric
started arguing and getting into conflicts with Papi. These events
stressed DIane out at first but helped her become more resistant and stronger person andindependant in the future. Mami was deported to Colombia. She was sad at
first but became happier thanks to her relatives’ hospitality and
begged Diane to come live with her. Two months later, Mami moved back
into the US and moved back into the house. Papi wasn’t thrilled at first but started planning to move to New Jersey. A week after Mami
came back, she got arrested again while walking the neighbors’ kids to school. Papi didn’t want to get deported so he rented a basement
apartment from Olivia, who had been a friend for years. The apartment
was so small that the family had to either sell or get rid of most of
their belongings. Eric had already moved to New Jersey to start a new
life. The living conditions in this apartment were terrible and had a
large impact on Papi and Diane even through this the family dealt with these living condition. Papi was sad and had to work even longer to support Mami in Colombia,
Diane, and himself. Diane also got depressed and her grades slip.
Though to stress and being sad Acording to Diane, her family was trapped in a “living nightmare”. She was going through puberty in the 7th grade. During this time, Papi and Diane accepted
the fact that Mami wasn’t going to come back and focused on living the
life that they had. Some time later, Eric was attacked by a group of men and injured them while defending himself. He went to court where his lawyer told him to sign a paper because it was “the best legal strategy”. This led to him getting deported to Colombia. This made the family sad at first but let them spend more time and give more to Diane. Papi and Mami didn’t want to lose Diane, so they started working even harder to pay for a lawyer and citizenship. When Papi went to his “lawyer‘s office, he found out that the lawyer was a fraud and that he had just lost thousands of dollars. A week later, Diane got an audition for the Boston Arts Academy. This is significant because it lets Diane be successful in life and gives her place where she can be friends with people who are like her. Which then she can be happy and have a great life event trough the triumph she been trough. And pushed her to work even harder

The significant events that happen in these plages were Diane’s mother and brother getting deported. Her mother was deported two times which after the first Diane’s response changed. Diane’s original response was panicked when she came to find her mother gone when she came back from school. The second time she wasn’t that surprised or panicked. When Eric got deported due to legal trough, the family was sad at first but got used to it. The whole time this was going on, the family was dealing with the father fighting with the son working long hours while being scammed by fraudulent lawyers. Diane went from being okay to depressed then going into puberty causing even more problems for Diane, but these are events that all fit the coming of age criteria of a character learning to grow and deal with problems on their own.

“In the Country We Love” reminds me of the book “Flipped”, but “Flipped” focuses on two people and how they grow close then apart and the story is fictional. “Flipped” like “In the Country We Love” revolved around family and the difference between family members and how they feel. I feel “Flipped” is more interesting to read since you have flip the book upside down to read the other main character story and it tricks you into loving than hating the original main character for not respecting someone else’s family life/situation and being rude to the girl other than the main character to be taught a lesson by his grandfather, who he hasn’t seen in seven years. I prefer “Flipped” over “In the Country We Love” because it felt more down to earth by also put in real life situations without it feeling slow or uninteresting because of the book’s unique formatting and sad conclusion. “In the Country We Love” I prefer how it feels more personal and the fact that it’s real gives it a few extra points.

Diane was raised in a low-middle class immigrant family from Columbia. She usually go to church in a Catholic service just like most other Columbians. She wanted to be a signer or an actress. As they were living happily, her parents had a major issue. Her parents were immigrants. Besides spending thousands of dollars to become a citizen, weeks, months, and years had passed and never receives any good news on her immigrant’s documentation. They were a fraud. On a random day, police came and arrested her mother and sent her to jail then deported her. I wonder how it felt thinking you’ll never see your mother again? When the police departed her family everyone in the house was sad, cried, and her father looks like she was not living in the world anymore. Since her parents were undocumented she wanted to help her parents. So she had started to focus more in school, because she wanted to help them gain citizenship. Since mom was absent her father had to work extremely hard. As evidence, her father was working 3 jobs and long hours to help Diane with her situation.

This reminds me of my cousin because he was deported back to Haiti after 20 years in the United States. I was too young to know if he was trying to get citizenship but the family was sad when it all happened.