PT50.S4.Q5 Mexican American writing

MarkmarkMarkmark Alum Member

I chose AC C and didn't even know I was wrong until I did heavy review on the right AC D.

C. I initially thought "Yes the author would agree it is a predominant strength for the Mexican American writers to not be tied down by a literary establishment. It would follow reasonably that without the need to be accountable to a larger establishment the writers are more free to experiment."
The part where this is wrong is the 2nd half - "So are free to experiment..." Where is the support from the passage that the author believes the writers are more free to experiment in ways Mexican writers can't? There isn't any. In fact, where is the support that Mexican writers can't experiment??? This was an assumption I made - that if you are tied to a literary establishment, you won't be able to experiment. But in fact no such reference is made. All we know is that Mexican writing tends to be characterized by longer writing, more "cosmopolitanism," and more theoretical content. We don't know that Mexican writers are discouraged from being experimental.
My takeaways - 1. Where is "experimenting" mentioned? It's not, this should be a red flag if the AC mentions a theme / content that's not found in the passage. 2. It is a big assumption that to be tied to a literary establishment, even if the author thinks this is a bad thing, may not mean you're less able to experiment. What if in fact the establishment has been encouraging experimentation relentlessly to Mexican authors?

D. I was put off by "regional" writers; I didn't think the author believed Mexican American writers were regional at all! But this doesn't matter!!! We could exclude the Mexican American writers completely and the author would still have to agree with this AC.
The Mexico city literary establishment = "this community." They believe "regional" writing (dismissive tone) is "parochial" again a negative tone word. So in Mexico "this community" writes in a certain way and has control for who is successful and who isn't. If someone is writing "regional" and "parochial" content, is this going to win the award for best book in Mexico? No, because the establishment who runs the show doesn't value the regional and parochial content. They value something else.

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