Final Research Paper

Argueta and de Jesus both map what it is like to live under crisis. One Day of Life gives us the realities present under the Salvadoran civil war while Child of the Dark provides us insight into what life is like for a Black, working poor, single mother in the faves of Brazil. Crushing poverty and the lack of consistent access to food, potable water, and education are some of the similarities in both of these settings. For the final paper students will do a deep reading of both of these texts and map the similarities and differences that they illustrate as the expansion of COVID-19 continues in the US and around the globe, generally. What realities surrounding questions of power, inequality, and exploitation do Argueta and de Jesus expose? What relationships do those realities have with what COVID-19 will invariably keep uncovering in terms of inequity, power, and exploitation in the US? How does the legacy of civil war in El Salvador play itself out during the global pandemic? How does the legacy of grinding poverty, concentrated in Black Brazilian quarters of society, impact the spread and response to COVID-19 in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo (major cities in Brazil with large, impoverished sectors of Black Brazilians)? Finally, what lessons to survive do Argueta and de Jesus provide us in their texts?

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