My Family Photo Essay

My Family Photo Essay

Christina Moody

Prof. Horowitz

ENL 110-37

10 February 2016

My Niece

My Family

This is Madalyn, she's Ashley's daughter but she might as well be mine. This little girl is the light of my life at this point. She's intelligent, silly, and incredibly cute.

My Parents

My Sister

My parents have been married for over 15 years and have 3 kids, 2 biological and me.

This is my (biological) sister Ashley. Throughout my entire life Ashley has been my role model and has inspired me to do things that I myself wasn't even sure I could do.

My Little Brothers

My mom taught me how to love and appreciate myself, while my dad taught me how to take care and provide for myself.

I have two little brothers, Isaiah and Isaac.

These are my parents Hector and Manuela Ramos. Althought they may not have brought me into this world, they are the only reasons why I am still here today. They took me in and treated me as though I was their own child, and in essence saved my life.

Isaiah is is just like my dad. He acts like my dad, talks like my dad, and even kind of looks like him too.

Isaac is more like my grandmother. Not only do they look alike but they can both be very silly.

Our Music

Birthing Traditions

The music we listen to is very similar to that of Hispanics. Our music has a somewhat fast beat but also flows in a way. It is classified as Pasada or Kizomba music and that is because the dances that we do to this music are called Pasada and Kizomba. Pasada is a very close and somewhat intimate 1-2 step and Kizomba is the same thing just much faster.

Our Language

Death Tradions

My Culture

One of our traditions called Seti is the celebration of a new baby. Seti also means seven, and in this case stands for the first seven days after the baby is born. During these seven days family from all over will come and stay with you to be aroud the baby. Also, for these seven days family gift the baby with clothes, toiletries, money, food, and more.

Cape Verdeans speak Portuguese Creole. Contrary to popular belief, it is not the same language that Haitians speak. Our language is based heavily on Portuguese but is kind of similar to Spanish. Similar to any places, each Cape Verdean island has there our dialect of Portuguese Creole that can range from drastic differences to barely noticeable differences.

As most people do, we also mourn when someone we know and loved pass away but we only do it for seven days. For the first seven days after someones death, the family all comes together and mourns but after the seven days we stop. Close and immediate families tend not to play loud music or music at all for about three months after the passing away as well. Most important of all, when someone passes their spouse wears black everyday for the rest of their lives.

My Traditions

Anniversary

Our Food

In my house we eat American food sometimes but usually we eat Cape Verdean food. Our meals usually consist of rice and beans with some kind of meat.

My family has a very special tradition. We celebrate the anniversary of me being a part of the family. Every June 30th, the whole family will go out to eat and just enjoy time together as a celebration of another year I will have been part of my family.

One of our favorite Cape Verdean dishes is something called Cachupa. Cachupa can be a soup or more of a bean salad depending on what means its made for, On the left, the Cachupa is more soupy and is usually eaten for dinner. While on the right, the Cachupa is less soupy and would most likely be eaten as a breakfast food.

Family means a lot of different things to different people and may consist of a variety of different people as well. Some may consider family to be those that come from the same bloodline such as mother, father, and siblings, while others may consider family to be those that live in the same house as them such as mother, father, siblings, aunts, uncles and even cousins. If this was how I were to classify family, I would have an extremely large family. Let me elaborate, I was a foster child from the age of 6 until I was 18. I have lived in more homes than I can count on all my fingers and toes but that doesn't make all those people a part of my family. So even though some of those I consider family are biological, family for me has nothing to do with bloodlines or living situations. The people I consider to be my family are people who have been my shoulders to cry on, my helping hands, and my personal therapists. They are people who love me and care about me the way true family does.