Tuesday, February 14, 2017

How does the title "Silent Dancing" relate to the text?

The full title of Silent Dancing by Judith Ortiz Cofer is Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. The particular phrase "Silent Dancing" refers to a specific memory of Ortiz Cofer's childhood.  She recalls a home video that she watched numerous times with her mother of people dancing at a party. There is no sound in the video, and the video quality is poor, but the image of the people dancing silently...

The full title of Silent Dancing by Judith Ortiz Cofer is Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood. The particular phrase "Silent Dancing" refers to a specific memory of Ortiz Cofer's childhood.  She recalls a home video that she watched numerous times with her mother of people dancing at a party. There is no sound in the video, and the video quality is poor, but the image of the people dancing silently is one of the links to her childhood memories. The link to this particular home movie is so strong that she calls it "the only complete scene in color [she] can recall from those years."


Silent Dancing contains memories and reflections within those memories about Ortiz Cofer's experience growing up as a Puerto Rican child in New Jersey and spending months at a time in Puerto Rico. It also mentions her father's desire for complete assimilation as well as the desire of her mother and her mother's family to impart aspects of the Puerto Rican culture into Ortiz Cofer.


The title, Silent Dancing: A Partial Remembrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood, not only tells you the general idea of the book, but also hints directly at one of the partial remembrances found in the book.

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