Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan is an award winning historical fiction book based on the life of a Mexican migrant farmer in the 1930´s. Esperanza is the daughter of a wealthy grape grower in Mexico. Her life is good, until her father is killed by bandits. Esperanza´s mother is convinced by her uncle to marry him, but after he burns down the ranch, Esperanza, her mother, and a family of former servants escape to California to become farmworkers. Esperanza must learn to work hard. When her mother falls ill, she joins the field workers through the crop seasons. Other problems arise when farmers begin to strike and more migrant farmers arrive. Esperanza must overcome struggles and keep her hope alive.
Esperanza Rising will allow readers to learn a number of Spanish words about the lives of migrant farm workers during the 1930's as the character deals with strikes, discrimination, and harsh living conditions. Readers can discuss the challenges that Esperanza must overcome when she leaves her home in Mexico to live in the United States, the source of her hope for happiness, and how family relationships influence how we view and interact in the world. Readers can be introduced to elements of Mexican culture and begin to understand the various social and class distinctions as well as the economic divisions between Esperanza's family and their servants and farm workers. The hardships of immigrating to a new country due to tragedy in Esperanza's family can also be discussed.
Publisher's Weekly:
Told in a lyrical, fairy tale - like style, Ryan's (riding Freedom) robust novel set in 1930 captures a Mexican girl's fall from riches, her immigration to California and her growing awareness of class and ethnic tensions. Thirteen-year-old Esperanza Ortega and her family are part of Mexico's wealthy, land-owning class in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Her father is a generous and well-loved man who gives his servants land and housing. Early in the novel, bandits kill Esperanza's father, and her corrupt uncles threaten to usurp their home. Their servants help her and her mother flee to the United States, but they must leave Esperanza's beloved Abuelita (grandmother) behind until they can send for her. Ryan poetically conveys Esperanza's ties to the land by crafting her story to the rhythms of the seasons. Each chapter's title takes its name from the fruits Esperanza and her countrymen harvest, firs in Aguascalientes, then in California's San Joaquin Valley. Ryan fluidly juxtaposes world events (Mexico's post-revolution tensions, the arrival of Oklahoma's Dust Bowl victims and the struggles between the U.S. government and Mexican workers trying to organize) with one family's will to survive - while introducing readers to Spanish words and Mexican customs. Readers will be swept up by vivid descriptions of California dust storms or by the police crackdown on a labor strike (""The picket signs lay on the ground, discarded, and like a mass of marbles that had already been hit, the strikers scattered?""). Ryan delivers subtle metaphors via Abuelita's pearl's of wisdom, and not until story's end will readers recognize how carefully they have been strung. Ages 9-14. (Oct.)
Kirkus Reviews:
The author of Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride (1999) and Riding Freedom (1997) again approaches historical fiction, this time using her own grandmother as source material. In 1930, Esperanza lives a privileged life on a ranch in Aguascalientes, Mexico. But when her father dies, the post-Revolutionary culture and politics force her to leave with her mother for California. Now they are indebted to the family who previously worked for them, for securing them work on a farm in the San Joaquin valley. Esperanza balks at her new situation, but eventually becomes as accustomed to it as she was in her previous home, and comes to realize that she is still relatively privileged to be on a year-round farm with a strong community. She sees migrant workers forced from their jobs by families arriving from the Dust Bowl, and camps of strikers—many of them US citizens—deported in the “voluntary repatriation” that sent at least 450,000 Mexicans and Mexican-Americans back to Mexico in the early 1930s. Ryan’s narrative has an epic tone, characters that develop little and predictably, and a romantic patina that often undercuts the harshness of her story. But her style is engaging, her characters appealing, and her story is one that—though a deep-rooted part of the history of California, the Depression, and thus the nation—is little heard in children’s fiction. It bears telling to a wider audience. (author’s note) (Fiction. 9-15)
Publication date: October 1, 2000
Publisher's recommended age(s): 9 - 12
Number of pages: 262
Available on: Audiobook (unabridged), Hardback, Kindle
Last updated: March 25, 2019
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