Saturday, July 17, 2010
Recommended by Shelley
The House On Mango StreetI. Sandra Cisneros
A. Born, 1954 Chicago, Illinois. Cisneros currently resides in San Antonio, Texas.
B. The third of seven children and the only girl born to an immigrant father and American-born mother, both of Mexican ancestry.
C. Cisneros spent time migrating between Chicago and Mexico City throughout her childhood.
D. Obtained a BA in English and a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing
E. Spent a number of years in the education sector before publishing her first work in 1980.
F. Writer in Residence for Our Lady of the Lake University.
G. Established the Macondo Foundation for writers
H. Strong social activist leanings and supports numerous.
I. Notable works of Sandra Cisneros
1. Poetry collections:
a) My Wicked, Wicked Ways, Third Woman Press, Bloomington, IN, November, 1, 1987.
b) Loose Woman, Alfred A. Knopf, Distributed by Random House, April 26, 1994, New York City, NY, April, 26, 1994.
2. Books:
a) The House on Mango Street, Arte Publico Press, Houston, TX, January, 1, 19848.
b) Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, Random House; 1st ed edition, New York City, NY, April, 3, 1991.
c) Caramelo, or, Puro Cuento, Alfred A. Knopf, New York City, NY, January, 1, 2002.
J. Childhood in the inner city of Chicago and role in teaching
II. Brief Plot Summary
A. Move into home on Mango Street.
B. Esperanza makes friends with Lucy and Rachel; introduce us to her other neighbors.
C. Experiences with coming-of-age issues cause Esperanza and her friends to mature.
D. Esperanza has a tragic sexual encounter.
E. Makes plans to leave her neighborhood and become a writer; vows to come back.
III. Characters
A. Relationships
1. Esperanza’s relationship with her parents has little relevance. Busy mother, concerned for her father.
2. Friends develop her self-image by acting as a sounding-board; provide a cautionary tale.
3. Interactions with women she admires give her hope. Alicia inspiring to her; commitment to college.
B. Through interactions with their environment and each other, Cisneros develops her characters’ importance in the novel.
1. Growing divide between Esperanza and her younger sister Nenny.
2. Esperanza, Rachel and Lucy become more mature through their budding womanhood.
3. Consequences of Sally’s behavior and decisions.
IV. Setting
A. One year period in the late 1970’s
B. Latino section of a Chicago neighborhood
V. Esperanza’s dissatisfaction with the social issues create her desire for a house. Representative of her desire to be free to write and herself.
VI. Resolution – Only hints at future resolution of her predicament.
VII. Vocabulary:
A. Comadres
1. Hispanic: godmother or close female friend
2. “Esperanza, you go to school. Study hard… Look at my comadres. She means Izaura whose husband left and Yolanda whose husband is dead. Got to take care all your own, she says shaking her head” (House, 91).
B. Neighborhood
1. The people living near one another; a section lived in by people who consider themselves neighbors.
2. “Those who don’t know any better come into our neighborhood scared. The think we’re dangerous. They think we will attack them with shiny knives. They are stupid people who are lost and got here by mistake... All brown all around, we are safe. But watch us drive into a neighborhood of another color and our knees go shakity-shake and our car windows get rolled up tight and our eyes look straight.” (House, 28)
C. House
1. A building in which one or more families live.
2. “The house on Mango Street is ours, and we don’t have to pay rent to anybody, or share the yard with the people downstairs, or be careful not to make too much noise, and there isn’t a landlord banging on the ceiling with a broom. But even so, it’s not the house we’d thought we’d get.” (House, 3)
D. Home
1. The house in which a person or family lives; a family living together in one dwelling; the place where something is usually or naturally found; the goal in some games, especially: home plate.
2. “But today she is listening to my sadness because I don’t have a house. You live right here, 4006 Mango, Alicia says and points to the house I’m ashamed of. No, this isn’t my house I say and shake my head as if shaking could undo the year I’ve lived here. I don’t belong. I don’t ever want to come from here. You have a home, Alicia, and one day you’ll go there, to a town you remember, but me I never had a house, not even a photograph… only one I dream of.” (House, 106)
E. Shoes
1. An outer covering for the human foot usually having a thick and somewhat stiff sole and heel and a lighter upper part; another's place or point of view.
2. “Today we are Cinderella… and we laugh at Rachel’s one foot with a girl’s grey sock and a lady’s high heel… But the truth is it is scary to look down at your foot that is no longer yours and see attached a long long leg… Mr. Benny at the corner grocery puts down his important cigar: Your mother know you got shoes like that? Who give you those? Nobody. Them are dangerous, he says. You girls too young to be wearing shoes like that.” (House, 40-41).
VIII. Personal criticism & recommendation
A. Criticism
1. Cisneros employed symbolism in the story to relate key concepts:
a) Trees: represent the four girls (Esperanza, Nenny, Rachel and Lucy) who grow tall despite the inner city surroundings.
b) Windows: symbolize imprisonment and lack of freedom. Mamacita, Rafaela, Minerva, and Sally spend time looking out their apartment windows while experiencing restrictions on their liberty.
c) Shoes: signify adult femininity, sexual feelings and identity.
2. Characters central to the plot
a) Alicia – most like Esperanza; instead of marrying or having a baby, she goes to college, works hard and utilizes her intelligence to escape the neighborhood.
b) Sally – most unlike Esperanza; relies heavily on her sexual power with men to get what she wants and exemplifies what Esperanza is trying to get away from in the neighborhood.
c) The Three Sisters: The weird sisters (fortune tellers) from Macbeth or the Three Fates of Greek mythology. Give Esperanza hope for her future but admonish her to help those she is leaving behind.
3. The story was very effectively written by the use of several devices:
a) Language: Esperanza narrates the story with the puerile speech patterns of a pre-pubescent girl. The words have an uncomplicated, rhyming quality reminiscent of the chants the girls use in jump rope games.
b) The author employs symbolism of simple, everyday objects that evoke childlike images of a primer: houses, trees, windows, shoes, etc.
B. Recommendation
1. I would recommend this novel based on its cultural and gender views, although it is best appreciated by a much younger audience.
2. The book provides a rare view of inner-city life of children and Chicanas.
a) First-person view of life in the barrio from the unbiased view of a child.
b) “No Speak English” describes Mamacita; language barrier.
c) “Geraldo No Last Name,” sacrifice and loneliness of immigrants.
d) “Hips” reflects on the girls’ wish to become physically desirable to boys.
e) Women and girls struggle against men’s and even other women’s oppressive attitudes in their families and communities to find happiness in life.
Recommended by Amy
The Tequila WormTitle of Novel
I. Author
A. Lifespan (When did the author live?)
Viola Canales was born on April 21, 1957 in McAllen, Texas
B. Background (Where and under what conditions did the author live?)
Viola and her family lived in McAllen, Texas in the barrio – close-knit and highly religious community when it was at least 80 percent Mexican-American. The community was poor, but rich with culture, traditions, family, friends and food.
C. Relevant facts (List a few important facts about the author’s life.)
The Tequila Worm is filled with facts surrounding some of the choices/decisions that Viola made as a 14 year old.
1) Parents considered it disrespectful to speak English in front of her grandmother, so she started grade school unable to speak or write English. It took her until the 3rd grade to catch up and she at times dreaded and stressed about going to school.
2) Won an academic scholarship at the age of 15 to attend St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, which was 300 miles from McAllen, her family and community
3) Accepted to attend Harvard College; however, restless she took several “adventures” in her undergrad leaving to work one summer as an organizer with the United Farm Workers Union. The second time was to complete officers training at Fort Benning – Served as a Captain in the US Army
4) Graduated from Harvard, concentrating in government, in 1986
5) Pursued law degree, which she felt would help her improve “equality and opportunity for everybody whatever their culture or race or gender”
6) Joined O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, commission that investigated the Los Angeles Police Department after the beating of Rodney King
7) In 1994, worked for the Clinton Administration as the regional administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) – Returned to communities to help women and minorities start and grow businesses. Helped guarantee $3 billion in loans annually in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and Guam
8) Started writing
D. Notable works (Name and tell the types of the author’s most important publications.)
2001 – Orange Candy Slices and Other Secret Tales – collections of short stories
2005 – The Tequila Worm
2006 – Won Pura Belpre Award (Presented to a Latino/Latina writer and illustrator whose work best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth)
E. Influence of life on works (Relate how events in the author’s life influenced his writing.)
Viola started writing stories about her experience growing up while at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School to help with feeling homesick. The Tequila Worm debuts a lot of those experiences.
II. Brief plot summary (What happened throughout the story?)
The Tequila Worm is about a young girl, Sofia, coming of age while living in a Texas border town, McAllen, with her family. Upon given the opportunity to win a scholarship to attend a boarding school, St. Luke’s, in Austin, Texas, Sofia must decide how to pursue her dreams, but remain close with her family values.
Barrio Storyteller – Tells Sofia, as a young girl, that she resembles her Mama Maria who was a mule. “Always kicking her way through things. A force to behold! But beautiful, with the darkest eyes and long, wild Apache hair. And you, Sofia, not only look like her, but have inherited her gift for mule-kicking” (p. 2).
First Communion – At the age of seven took her first communion by accepting the holy host. She had practiced this with her younger sister, Lucy, and cousin Noe. Telling them that upon accepting the wafer they must allow it to dissolve in their mouth because its holy and if you bite it “you die and go to hell”. “Then on Sunday, you can’t ear anything – not even a tiny crumb – for a whole hour before taking communion.” Then a week after accepting her first communion she was standing in the Communion line and remembered that she had taken a bite of Berta’s chocolate bar just before Mass. She panics, but is afraid that people will think she had done something really evil if she sat back down. She froze when she got to the priest who, after she did not reply to him, shoved the wafer into her mouth and pushed her aside. She secretly removed it from her mouth and placed it in her shirt pocket. Upon arriving home, Sofia stated she was ill and ran upstairs to change her shirt, later telling her mother what had happened. Her mother immediately took her to church to confess to the priest and left the shirt. Three months later the shirt arrived at the house with the pocket sewn shut.
Easter Cascarones – Sofia becomes very competitive with Berta during lent to save the most egg shells/cartons, but does not realize the significance until she and Lucy must decorate each individual egg. Sofia hits Berta with an egg filled with flour. Berta hits Sofia with an egg filled with mustard. Lucy hits Berta with a rotten egg.
El Dia de los Muertos – Sofia’s cousin, Berta, told her that she had gone to the other side of town the previous year and found “chocolate heaven”. Sofia started in the barrio and got:
Small skull with her name on it
Cucumber
Big sugar tortilla
Card with a Guardian Angel
More cucumbers
Carrots
Pennies
Peanuts
Popcorn balls
Brown egg
Flowers (fresh, paper, plastic)
Bean taco
Lollipops
Some hard candy
Upon complaining about the lack of chocolate bars and quarters to her mother, they drove across the railroad tracks to trick-or-treat. She obtained Hershey bars and kisses. When her father asked about the candy she got and saw the different bags, he drove her to the cemetery where people were talking, dancing, playing guitars, singing to tombs and eating food. Sofia comments about wishing they lived on the other side of town in the nice houses. Her father said, “we have our music, our foods, our traditions. And the warm hearts of our families.” And tells her how the comadres got together to cure Lucy after the accident, which was something the rich doctors could not do.
Taco Head – Sofia use to ask her mother every morning for lunch money to eat at school or a sandwich, but her mother would always make her 2 bean tacos. Some kids at school called the Mexican Americans “beaners” and she did not want to be labeled. One day one of the kids caught her eating the tacos in the far corner of the cafeteria and called her “taco head”. However, Coach Clarke (girls’ PE teacher) invited Sofia to eat lunch at her table and they shared each others food. Sofia then realizes that the sandwiches are not all she thought they would be. When Sofia mentions that she would like to kick the girl who made fun of her, Coach Clarke suggests, “Sofia, learn to kick with your head instead” and “by kicking her butt at school, by beating her in English, math, everything – even sports”. She then started to eat her tacos quickly and head to the library.
Scholarship to St. Luke’s Episcopal – A doctor was funding scholarships to send four Mexican American students from lower Rio Grande Valley to Saint Luke’s Episcopal School in Austin. Since Sofia was in the top of her class the school counselor wanted to recommend her. She would have to go through tests and interviews. Upon reviewing the brochure, she was memorized by the building, chapel and especially the soccer fields. It made her think was of the mansions on the other side of town where the doctors and lawyers live. However, she became very hesitant when he told her it was 350 miles away from her family. Sofia brings it up at sobremesa and her family is shocked. Her mother brings up planning her quinceañera where she states that she does not want one.
Cleaning Beans – Every Tuesday when her father came home, Sofia would sit in the kitchen with him and clean pinto beans. He was very thorough and would not cook them until the water was clear. It was a time for them to bond, since they had similar personalities. Where as, Lucy was more similar to her mother. “These are better than any piece of meat or steak”.
Quinceañera – Sofia was Berta’s dama de honor at her quinceañera. As comadres, Berta provides tips to Sofia about how to discuss St. Lukes with her mother. Upon realizing that her mother is really nervous about her attending due to her not growing up, Sofia is able to prove to her mother and obtain her blessing. Her father tells her about the tequila worm curing homesickness.
Five New Dresses – Sofia must have dresses to attend the St. Luke’s formal dinners from Monday through Friday. Therefore, Berta offers to help her.
1) Berta’s blue dress
2) Sofia’s dama dress from Berta’s quinceañera
3) Sofia’s father gives her $10 dollars, which she purchases a dress at Wal-Mart
4) Made out of a bathrobe
5) Emerald silk dress made from a bedsheet
The bathrobe dress and bedsheet were purchased at Johnson’s Ropa Usada (Take Sofia’s $3 dollars from her piggy bank) where for a flat fee you could purchase a whole bale of random clothes.
Packing Shed – Berta continues to try and convince Sofia to get sponsored by some padrinos and madrinas to purchase her dresses, but she is too proud to ask for the assistance. She went into numerous retail shops on Main Street in town filling out applications. However, when she was walking home she came across a packing shed where Mexicans were sorting cucumbers. When she tells her father that evening, he says it is really hard work and to come home and he would raise the money. She tells him no that she wants to earn the money herself.
Arrival at Saint Luke’s – Upon arriving on campus and finding her dorm room, Sofia’s mother starts to set up her room alter, which consists of:
· Yellow votive candle
· 10” statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe
· Glow-in-the-dark rosary
· Framed print Guardian Angel
· Grandmother’s favorite saint, black San Marin de Porres (“Patron Saint of mixed-race people and all those seeking interracial harmony)
· 12” bleeding Christ on a wooden cross
Stolen alter pieces showing up in chapel
St. Luke’s preparing students for college as individuals (Sofia was use to unity of family – not individual gain)
Christmas nacimiento – Sofia’s grandmother is making a Mexican town out of mud, styroform and wood. Everyday they would open more boxes with items to place in the nacimiento. The themes would change from year to year.
Father’s death – Sofia’s father is diagnosed with cancer during her senior year and passes away. Her Tia Belia tells her that she must let her father go because he is holding on out of concern for her. Upon telling him how much she loved him; he passed away.
The Plaza – Sofia built a plaza where there old house use to be in McAllen and used the space to create a plaza for the neighborhood to meet, have conversations. She planted Mexican Jasmine, which were he father’s favorite.
III. Characters (Who are the main characters in the story?)
Sofia
Mother
Father
Lucy
Berta
A. Relationships (How are the main characters related to each other or important to the story?)
Family – Mother, Father, Sofia (daughter), Lucy (daughter, Sofia’s sister) and Berta (Sofia’s cousin).
They are important to the story because of the family values that Mexican Americans instill in themselves.
B. Development (How does the author show the increasing importance of the main characters? Include brief quotations, if possible.)
Sofia’s relationships develop with her:
Father – She is most like her father
Mother – She is least like her mother
Sister Lucy – About 5 years younger than Sofia, but they share a room and have a close relationship
Cousin Berta – Same age, they had a following out as children over a chocolate bar, but grown to become best friends and comadres
IV. Setting (Where and when does the story take place?)
A. Time and time span
The book does not really define the time period; however, if you assume that it is relevant to the author’s life then around the Late 60’s; Early 70’s
B. Place
Rio Grande Valley (McAllen, TX)
C. Importance of setting to the story (Could the story take place at any other time or place?)
Yes, if Mexican Americans still hold the same family values then this story could take place during any time period or place.
V. Conflict (What is the main problem?)
Sofia is offered the opportunity to obtain a scholarship to an excusive elite boarding school (St. Luke’s) in Austin, Texas. However, she struggles with convincing herself, specifically, her family to attend.
She struggles a little with being a Mexican American (Taco Head) and the candy at the neighborhood across town
VI. Resolution (How is the problem solved?)
Upon numerous discussions with her family and godmother (Tia Petra), she convinces everyone that she is ready for the challenge and the future opportunities for her life.
Even though she is on a full scholarship, Sofia’s family must still come up with $400 dollars for the semester. Sofia takes it upon herself to earn the money versus just allowing her parents to struggle and come up with it.
VII. Vocabulary
A.
1. Definition
Cascarones – confetti eggs
Eggs filled with confetti or small toys, decorated, and closed with tissue paper. Tradition carried among friends and family. Thrown or crushed over the recipients head. Brings “good luck”
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
During Lent, Sofia’s mother made the family eggs. They washed out the eggshells which were dried, placed in the empty cartons and stacked on top of the refrigerator.
“As the forty days of Lent marched on, towers of egg cartons grew on top of the refrigerator. Seven days before Easter, I counted fifteen cartons” (p.18).
“Lucy and I sat there for hours, until the sun finally set. By then we were not only streaked and colored from the previous day’s crayons and dyes and markers, but also covered with confetti and bits of crepe paper and gobs of goo. But we were experts at transforming empty white eggs into magical casarones” (p. 23).
B.
1. Definition
Comadre – relationship between parents and godparents of a child is an important bond which originates when the child is baptized.
Relationship formalizes a pre-existing friendship which results in a strong lifelong bond.
Quotation (including page number) from text
When Sofia wins one of the scholarship’s to St. Lukes, her parents stated that the family still needs to decide whether she will accept and that she needs to visit her Tia Petra (who happens to be her godmother, too). Godmother also has a say in her education.
Sofia: “Well, Mama worries that if I go away to Saint Luke’s, I won’t learn to be a good comadre. And when I asked what that meant, Papa said that it was at the heart of learning to be happy.”
Tia Petra: “Ay. Two Martians talking. That’s because you’re still young, Sofia, and learning what your mama means takes time. And not through books but through experience, and having comadres around to help you.”
“…Part of learning to become a good comadre is learning how to feel happiness, especially after life gets tricky” (p.56).
C.
1. Definition
Curanderas – practices folk medicine; an herb. Dedicated to curing physical or spiritual illnesses.
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
“…like curing cases of evil eye with the secret powder of a chicken egg, or curing earaches by inserting and then igniting paper cones inside throbbing ears – but she had brought a dead baby back to life just by blowing into it. She had given a poor woman who couldn’t have children so many teas to drink and so many saints to bury that the woman would up with three babies, and all of them with bright orange hair” (p.27).
D.
1. Definition
Canicula – occurs during the hottest, rainiest part of the year. Begins July 14 and lasts forty days to August 24.
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
“The forty days between July fourteenth and August twenty-fourth, which are the hottest days of the year and when the cotton gets picked.”
“But what does that have to do with losing your keys?”
“Everything, mi’ja, because the craziest things happen during canicula. But to this day, I still don’t know whether the canicula makes people crazy so they do crazy things, or whether it makes things crazy to make them crazy” (p.113).
E.
1. Definition
Sobremesas - It refers to the time spent gathered around a table talking after a meal.
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
“Sobremesa was the time right after everyone had finished eating supper and was relaxing and sipping coffee or hot chocolate around the kitchen table. There were two rules for a sobremesa. One was that everyone had to take a turn and say something. The other was that you had to pay attention, listen to the person talking, and never, never interrupt” (p.45-46).
VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism (What literary tools did the author employ to tell the story? Cite examples from the novel. How effectively was the story written? What tools did the director and producer employ to show the story? Cite examples from the movie. How effectively was the story portrayed on film?)
There are some gaping holes throughout the story in regard to Sofia’s age and some of the Spanish words were used in a different meanings or definitions than what I located online.
B. Recommendation (Would you suggest that others read this novel or watch this movie? State reasons. Give examples from the text or the movie, if possible. Which medium did you prefer? State reasons and cite examples.)
I would recommend others to read The Tequila Worm. It portrays the strong family values and bonds that Mexican Americans families hold.
Unity of family versus individuality and pursuit of a higher educated life with opportunities
Recommended by David
Novel Information
Author(s), last name first
Rice, David
Title, underlined or italicized
Crazy Loco
City of publication
New York
Publisher
Penguin Group (USA) Inc
Copyright date
2001
Number of pages
135
Format (paperback or hardback, not online or taped)
Paperback
One sentence encapsulating the anticipated content of the book. In other words, write only one sentence telling what you think the book will depict.
Several short stories involving children taking place in South Texas.
Recommended by Oscar
Frida Kahlo – The PaintingsI. Author
A. Lifespan
Hayden Herrera is an art historian, she was born in Kent, England in 1939. She has lectured widely, curated several exhibitions of art, taught Latin American art at New York University, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
B. Background
She now lives and works in New York City.
C. Relevant facts about the author
1961- BA in English Literature, Cambridge University, England.
1964- BFA and MFA in Painting, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
1964-65 - Post-Graduate Fellowship. University of Pennsylvania.
1967-79 -Teaches painting at the University of Pennsylvania.
1999 Inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
D. Notable works
She is the author of numerous articles and reviews for such publications as Art in America, Art Forum, Connoisseur, and the New York Times, among others. Her books include Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo; Mary Frank; and Matisse: A Portrait.
E. Influence of life on works
Hayden pursued graduate study in art history, earning her MA from Hunter College and her PhD in 20th Century American Art from CUNY, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on Frida Kahlo, the basis for her later biography and a topic suggested by a professor at CUNY. Writing about Frida “was perfect,” Hayden says, “because this was during the feminist movement, the mid 1970s, and it was very emotional to write about a woman and her life.”
Another important influence in Hayden’s evolution as a writer was her lifelong battle with dyslexia. “Struggling with reading means you try to write very clearly—you really think about the reader and take him by the hand.”
(North Country School’s Website).
II. Brief plot summary
In this book, art historian Hayden Herrera brings together numerous paintings and sketches by the amazing Mexican artist, documenting each with explanatory text that probes the influences in Kahlo‘s life and their meaning for her work. Included among the illustrations are more than eighty full–color paintings, as well as dozens of black–and–white pictures and line illustrations. Among the famous and little–known works included in Frida Kahlo: The Paintings are The Two Fridas, Self–Portrait as a Tehuana, Without Hope, The Dream, The Little Deer, Diego and I, Henry Ford Hospital, My Birth, and My Nurse and I. Here, too, are documentary photographs of Frida Kahlo and her world that help to illuminate the various stages of her life.
Frida's life began and ended in Mexico City, in her home known as the Blue House
At age 6, Frida was stricken with polio, which caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other.
Frida enters high school she was a tomboy full of mischief .
On September 17, 1925, when she was 18, she was riding a bus in Mexico City when it was struck by a trolley car. A metal handrail pierced her abdomen, exiting through her vagina.
Diego and Frida get married on August 21,1929. Their marriage consisted of love, affairs with other people, creative bonding, hate, and a divorce in 1940 that lasted only for one year.
During her lifetime, Kahlo did not enjoy the same level of recognition as the great artists of Mexican muralism lile Rivera.
Her paintings, rooted in 19th-century Mexican portraiture, ingeniously incorporated elements of Mexican pop culture and pre-Columbian primitivism that, in the 1930s, had never been done before.
Proud of her luxurious facial hair that she painted it right on to her self-portraits.
Frida amazed people with her beauty and everywhere she went, people stopped in their tracks to stare in wonder. Men were fascinated with her, and because of this Frida had numerous, scandal filled affairs.
Attempted suicide a couple of times. In 1954, suffering from pneumonia, Kahlo went to a Communist march to protest the U.S. subversion of the left-wing Guatemalan government.
Her last words in her diary read:
"I hope the leaving is joyful and I hope never to return".
III. A. Characters
Relationships
Frida Kahlo – Main Character
Diego Rivera – Lover/Husband
Guillermo Kahlo – Frida’s father
Matilde Calderon – Mother
Cristina - Sister
Matilde - Sister
Adriana – Sister
Leon Trotsky – Lover/Soviet Communist leader
B. Development
The author narrates Frida’s life from her childhood to her dead. She is able to connect every event of her life to her paintings. Her biography is completely intertwine to her paintings. Frida was not a very outspoken person in her younger years, she decided that the best way for her to communicate was through her art.
“I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone,” Frida Kahlo once said, “because I am the person I know best.” (Frida Khalo, The paintings, Hayden Herrera)
Frida is well known for her self-portraits, they depict pain, happiness, sadness and love. Her best works of art displaying the most personal and original imagery were produced between the years of 1926 to 1954, when she died at the age of fourty-seven.
IV. Setting
A. Time and time span
1926 to 1954
B. Place
Coyoacan, Mexico
C. Importance of setting to the story
It could, but this was the best setting for it, since Frida was born and lived all her life in Coyoacan. She would long to come back to her town every time she went elsewhere.
V. Conflict
Frida Kahlo straggles all her life to show who she really was. She re-invented herself several occasions during her life time, she identified with the indigenous peoples of her country, she had acquired leftists communist ideas. She tried to find love throughout her life but at times it seemed impossible. The central love of her life was Diego Rivera, even though she knew he was not able to only love her. Though separated from him at times, their lives were always intertwined together like a rope. Her physical pain and suffering was also the main plot of her paintings and the story.
VI. Resolution
After a long life of pain and suffering, and dealing with the ever changing tumultuous love to Diego, Frida devoted herself to the things she loved more in her life, her family, her friends and her animals. She was finally recognized as an artist in her hometown and she was honored with the first one-person exhibition. Although her doctors had forbidden her to attend the opening, she arrived at the gallery in an ambulance. Enthroned in her own four posted bed. After many more surgeries, Frida’s health was deteriorating rapidly and she had her right leg amputated. She reportedly died of a pulmonary embolism, but given her many suicide attempts, many of Frida’s friends believed that she killed herself.
VII. Vocabulary
A. La Raza
1. Definition
Race
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
Frida expressed her ties to what she called la raza, or the people. Not only in art but in her dress, her behavior, and the decoration of her home. (p.7)
B. Pata de Palo
1. Definition
Peg leg
2. Quotation (including page number) from text
When she was riding her bicycle we would yell at her ‘Frida, pata de palo!’(p.29)
C. Alegria
1. Definition
Happiness
2. Quotation
Even in moments when she summoned her babitual alegria. (p.216)VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism
My personal opinion of the book is that it was very well written and organized. The author has the ability to describe chronological events of Frida’s life, and she is able to attach these events to her paintings at the same time, giving the reader not only the text but a painted image of that event. She writes about an imaginary friend that Frida had when she was 6 years old, and she includes the actual writing of this event:
“I most have been 6 years old when I experienced intensely an imaginary friendship with a little girl more or less the same age as me. On the glass window of what at that time was my room, and which gave onto Allende Street, I breathed vapor onto one of the first panes. I let out a breath and with a finger I drew a door”… Full of great joy and urgency, I went out in my imagination through this “door.” I crossed the whole plain that I saw on front of me until I arrived at the dairy called “Pinzon.”…(p.29)
The author conducted a very extensive research before launching into the writing of the book. She used hundreds or reliable resources which help her make the story as accurate and credible as possible.
The movie cites a lot of the passages of her life as witnesses described it to the most intimate detail. I think the movie is a great depiction of her life and works of art.
B. Recommendation
I would recommend this movie to all audiences. Frida is not just a good role model for Mexican-Americans but for all of us. The Author is very good at narrating the life and art accomplishments of Frida chronologically which makes the reading more and more interesting as the reader surfs through the book. The movie is a good match to the book, it is the visual complement of the story.
Recommended by Tammy
Bless Me, UltimaTitle of Novel
I. Author - Rudolfo A. Anaya
A. Lifespan
Rudolfo Anaya was born October 30, 1937, in Pastura, New Mexico; son of Martín and Rafaelita (Mares) Anaya. Anaya is still alive today.
B. Background
The fifth of seven children, Anaya also had three half-siblings from his parents previous marriages.
C. Relevant facts
· When Anaya was still very young, his family moved to Santa Rosa, Mexico. When he was a teenage, his family moved again, this time to Albuquerque, where Anaya graduated high school in 1956.
· Anaya attended business school for two years and dropped out before finishing, but he graduated from the University of New Mexico a few years later.
· Anaya worked as a public school teacher in Albuquerque from 1963 to 1970. During this period he married Patricia Lawless. Afterward, he worked as a the Director of Counseling for the University of Albuquerque for two years before accepting a position as an Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.
· Over a period of seven years, he completed his first and best known novel, Bless Me, Ultima, went on to win the prestigious Premio Quinto Sol award and is now considered a classic Chicano work.
D. Notable works
Novels
· Bless Me, Ultima, Quinto Sol, 1972.
· Heart of Aztlan, Justa, 1976.
· Tortuga, Justa, 1979.
· The Legend of La Llorona, Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol, 1984.
· A Chicano in China, University of New Mexico Press, 1986.
· Lord of the Dawn: The Legend of Quetzalcoatl, University of New Mexico Press, 1987.
· Alburquerque, Warner Books, 1995.
· Zia Summer, Warner Books, 1995.
· Rio Grande Fall, Warner Books, 1996.
· Jalamanta: A Message from the Desert, Warner Books, 1996.
· Rio Grande Fall, Warner Books, 1996.
· Shaman Winter, Warner Books, 1999.
Other
· The Silence of Llano, Tonatiuh-Quinto Sol, 1982.
· The Adventures of Juan Chicaspatas, Arte Publico Press, 1985.
· The Farolitos of Christmas, Hyperion, 1995.
· The Anaya Reader, Warner Books, 1995.
· Farolitos for Abuelo, Hyperion, 1998.
· Elegy on the Death of Cesar Chavez, Cinco Puntos Press, 2000.
· Anaya's manuscript collection is located at Zimmerman Library, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
E. Influence of life on works
· Bless Me, Ultima novel was also a semiautobiographical.
· Anaya published his second novel, Heart of Aztlan, in 1976. The novel tells the story of the Chavez family, who is forced to moved from their family farm to the barrios of Albuquerque. Heart of Aztlán is a political novel that focuses on the struggles of a displaced family. While the father attempts to fight the oppressive forces that surround him, his children succumb to the temptations of sex, drugs, and alcohol, and the family is torn apart.
· Tortuga, Anaya's third novel, published in 1979, completed a loosely tied trilogy that focused on the Chicano experience over several generations. Tortuga is set in a sanitarium for terminally ill teenagers. The main character is a teenage boy who lies in the hospital in a full body cast, partially paralyzed and unable to move. He is nicknamed Tortuga, which means Turtle in Spanish, because of his cast. In despair, he tries to kill himself, but through the wisdom of another boy who is terminally ill, Tortuga learns to accept and appreciate his life. The book was well received and was considered by some critics to be Anaya's most complete and accomplished work.
· A Chicano in China, 1986 was a nonfiction account of Anaya's travels to China.
II. Brief plot summary
Antonio asks questions concerning evil, justice, and the nature of God. He witnesses many violent deaths, which force him to mature and face the reality of life.
III. Characters
Antonio Marez – The precocious protagonist who turns to both pagan and Christian ideologies for guidance, but doubts both traditions.
Gabriel and Maria Marez – Antonio’s parents, whose frequently conflicting views make it difficult for Anotnio accept either of their belief systems. Maria, the devoutly Catholic daughter of a farmer, wants Antonio to follow her Luna family tradition by becoming a priest. Gabriel is the son of vaqueros (cowboys) and he prefers that Antonio follow the Marez tradition of restless wandering across the Llano, or plains.
Ultima – An elderly healer endowed with the spiritual power of her ancestors. Ultima lives with the Marez family and teaches the moral system that the novel espouses.
Lupito – A war veteran who has been deeply mentally affected by the war. Lupito’s death provides the driving force for Antonio’s serious moral and religious questioning.
Narciso – The town drunk and respects and loves Ultima deeply. Tenorio kills him because he supports Ultima.
Cico – One of Antonio’s closer friends. He exposes Antonio to yet another belief system when he takes Antonio to see the golden carp, a pagan god who lives in the river.
Tenorio Trementina – is the malicious saloon-keeper and barber.
A. Relationships
Antonio’s relationship with Ultima is the most important bond in the novel. Ultima acts as Antonio’s mentor and helps him cope with his anxieties and uncertainties. Ultima claims a spiritual connection with Antonio that manifests its power when Antonio dreams of Ultima burying his afterbirth to keep his destiny secret from the arguing families of his parents.
With Ultima’s help, Antonio makes the transition from childhood to adolescence and begins to make his own choices and to accept responsibility for their consequences.
B. Development (How does the author show the increasing importance of the main characters? Include brief quotations, if possible.)
Ultima plays a major role in Antonio’s quest for religious enlightenment.
IV. Setting
A. Time and time span – Mid 1940’s during and after World War II
B. Place – Guadalupe, New Mexico and the surrounding areas
C. Importance of setting to the story (Could the story take place at any other time or place?) - Yes, if Mexican Americans still hold the same family values then this story could take place during any time period or place.
V. Conflict
As Antonio moves from childhood to adolescence, he tries to reconcile his parents’ and his community’s conflicting cultural traditions. The Catholic Church was unable to answer Antonio’s questions. Antonio cannot bring himself to accept the lawlessness, violence and unthinking sensuality other. Antonio’s goal is independent thought and action; he strives to make his own moral decisions and to accept responsibility for their consequences.
VI. Resolution
Antonio learns to draw from each tradition and, as Ultima has taught him, become stronger, better person as a result. Now, instead of him feeling he has to choose between the two, Antonio accepts both views positively.
VII. Vocabulary
A. Ilano
1. Definition – someone who lives inhabitant of the plains
2. Quotation (including page number) from text – Pg. 3 “When I married you and went to the Ilano to live with you and raise your family, I could not have survived without la Grande’s help. Oh, those were hard years-“
B. Curandera
1. Definition – Quack, medicaster, an artful and tricking practitioner in physic.
2. Quotation (including page number) from text – Pg. 97 “I am curandera, “Ultima said softly, “and I have come to lift a curse. It is you daughters who do evil that are the brujas-“
C. Por la sangre de Lupito, todos debemos de rogar,
Que Dios la saque de pena y la lleve a descansar…
1. Definition - By the blood of Lupito, all we should beg, That God the kick-off of grief and carry it to rest
2. Quotation (including page number) from text – Pg. 34
VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism (What literary tools did the author employ to tell the story? Cite examples from the novel. How effectively was the story written? What tools did the director and producer employ to show the story? Cite examples from the movie. How effectively was the story portrayed on film?)
The author used literary tools like dreams, family, death, learning and education and tolerance and understanding. Themes used were the importance of moral independence and influence of culture on identity.
“The tragic consequences of life can be overcome by the magical strength that resides in the human heart.”
B. Recommendation (Would you suggest that others read this novel or watch this movie? State reasons. Give examples from the text or the movie, if possible. Which medium did you prefer? State reasons and cite examples.)
I would recommend this novel based on the cultural and insight into religion views. This novel is an easy read and explores alternative beliefs.
Recommended by Roy
Jaime Escalante: Sensational Teacher____________________________________
Title of Novel
I. Author
A. Lifespan: Ann Byers is a Mother and Grandmother who has worked in ministry with Youth for Christ since 1983.
B. Ann Byers seems to eschew having her own biographical information published beyond the brief information posted on the Youth for Christ website. Unfortunately, her date of birth is not given.
C. Relevant facts: She began serving her community and fellow-man by witnessing in neighborhoods to young people. She has served in numerous positions within the ministry-outreach and currently works with disadvantaged teenagers and their children. Many of the books that she writes address issues faced by these young people that she has faithfully served for nearly three decades.
D. She was born in Virginia, raised in St. Louis, and lived and worked for a period of years on a Navajo reservation in
Arizona. She moved to California in 1969 and began living in Fresno in 1976.
E. Some of Ann’s most important works include books devoted to instructing young people in the best ways to manage
their lives and finances. Books like First Credit Cards and Credit Smarts (Get Smart With Your Money), Sexually Transmitted Diseases: A Hot Issue, Great Resume, Application, and Interview Skills (Work Readiness), First Apartment Smarts (Get Smart With Your Money), Frequently Asked Questions About Puberty (Faq: Teen Life: Set1), and Teens and Pregnancy (A Hot Issue) all relate to her commitment to her fellow men and her decision to serve the youth in her area. The topics of her books reveal an amazing degree of awareness about the topics and a sense of familiarity with the challenges faced by the young people she reaches out to in ministry.
F. It’s almost counter-intuitive to think that Ann Byers only writes about the problems faced by youth because she empathizes with them. The more likely view is that she has either faced these issues herself, has gained a wealth of knowledge about the travails of youth in America by seeing so many of them overcome their unique situational challenges, or both.
Brief plot summary: Jaime Escalante was born on December 31, 1930 and is still active in his chosen vocation. Jaime’s parents were teachers assigned to a rural area with few modern conveniences in southwestern Bolivia. Their teaching assignment was to go to the remote village of Achacachi, which was located at a high elevation in the Andes Mountains. The village where Jaime would be born was established near the shores of Lake Titicaca.
Poverty was the norm for people in this area and the nearest town with decent medical care was four hours away, down winding, bumpy roads in the city of La Paz. So Jaime grew up with the village children and remained in Achacachi until he was nine years old. At that point, his parents separated and his mother moved with her children to La Paz which was overwhelming to young Jaime because of the large number of people living there. He also began attending a formal school where his hyper-active nature caused him to have many visits to the head of the schools for counseling and discipline.
As an adolescent, Jaime began to show unusual promise as a student in the area of mathematics and even exceeded the prowess of his own mother who taught him as a child and helped him with his homework. When he was convinced to take the college entrance exam by his best friend he scored the highest of all those tested in the physics and mathematics categories. So he was approached during his second year at Normal Superior College by a previous math tutor who was now a professor and academic director of many schools in the area to assist in preparing presentations for students and later to teach incoming students physics.
Later he accepted a teaching position at a new school for boys and was soon married to a woman who encouraged him to move to America for the sake of his family and his career. Though he loved teaching young Bolivians, he was compelled to move to the United States by the late 1960’s and was forced to return to college to attain his “American” teaching certification and an under-graduate degree. That degree led him to Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.
Ultimately, his teaching style and determination to help young people succeed led to him helping many students to pass the Advanced Placement (A.P.) Calculus Exam for entry into college.
Relevant facts
II. In the story Jaime Escalante is forced to overcome every manner of adversity imaginable. He had to learn new languages, once in his native country when he left the small villages in the Andes Mountains and again when he came to America to begin again in a career that he excelled in at home. He later became an entry-level employee at the Burroughs Corporation, an electronics manufacturing plant. He progressed through the ranks until he became a senior tester who worked directly with the company’s engineers.
He was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Scholarship. This was his entrée to a teaching position which he had coveted since he left the small country of Bolivia after teaching ten years in gender-separate schools for boys only. Escalante became a leader at Garfield High and led a mathematics renaissance that led to changes in the class curriculums and changes in him also.
III. Jaime Escalante believed in testing himself as much as he believed in testing his students. He drove himself to physical exhaustion and illness in his relentless quest to accomplish that which was deemed impossible. The challenge drove him to expect more than had ever been demanded of students before and required him to give more than any teacher had ever sacrificed before. His intimacy with his students was palpable and they simultaneously loved him and disdained him because of his obsession with success. He was driven to see them succeed academically.
He began with fourteen students in 1978 but only five took the A.P. exam. He was disappointed when only four passed, so he re-doubled his efforts and began to enlist the assistance of other teachers. In 1979 eight of ten students passed the exam which still didn’t satisfy Jaime Escalante. The next group of students, the following year, signed a contract and their parents were encouraged to support their children in this great endeavor. In 1980 fourteen of fifteen students passed the A.P. Calculus Exam and the next year Jaime was elected to chair the math department at Garfield High.
IV. The primary characters in the story are Jaime Escalante, the people that taught him, and the people he taught. His grandfather taught him to read and count in his native Bolivia when he was just a boy. He was a retired teacher and discovered that Jaime loved riddles, puzzles, and creative games. Umberto Bilbao was one of Escalante’s elementary school teachers and discovered that Jaime loved mathematics, and his mother, Sara Escalante, taught him fractions by slicing up pieces of fruit into various quantities representing fractional equivalents. Sara also taught Jaime about “ganas” or desire. In the army he learned to barter and negotiate for food and other items that he needed.
Fabiola Tapia taught him to be a better husband than his father was. She also taught him to expand his horizons and goals such that he traveled to America to create a new future he might never have had otherwise. She was not only his wife but a teacher herself. Later he developed his life-philosophy which centered around four guiding principles:
1. Determination – his ganas led him to long above all else to become a teacher;
2. Discipline – his lessons and studies were always a priority in his life which gave him organization;
3. Hard Work – he always held at least three jobs simultaneously, and had four at one point;
4. Success – eventually he had a beautiful family, a home that he loved, and the career he desired.
Later his brother, Sam Tapia, taught him the value of transportation so he purchased a new Volkswagon. He also taught Escalante to think of travel in terms of time required to make the journey, rather than distance. This became very important in a mega-city like Los Angeles. He went to the YMCA and junior college to learn English and learned from his ambitionless co-worker at Van de Kamp’s Coffee Shop to never settle for mediocrity. Finally, Escalante learned that American college professors care very little for their students when he was told to drop a class because he was unlikely to pass it due to his accent.
Other important characters include the employees and management at Burroughs Corporation, the instructors at the University of Southern California, the professor from California State University who pointed him to the National Science Foundation scholarship, and his students at Garfield High School
B. The characters in the story all impact Escalante’s perception of his surroundings or his perception of himself. His wife knew he would never leave Bolivia without prodding because of his sense of duty. She also correctly surmised that he would prefer to remain a busboy making near minimum wage rather than work for Burroughs unless it appealed to him as a means to shorten the distance to his teaching career. She wanted him to make more money and he did, so they both got a return-on-investment. The professor that required him to drop the class drove him to become a teacher that never gave up on his students, no matter the cost to him personally. The students learned to expand their goals and be led by ganas to strive for the so-called impossible. They become more than they were expected to be because he believed in them.
C. Development: The author does spend some time developing the relationships between Escalante and his mother as well as the relationships with his wife and students. Jaime’s mother was poverty-stricken despite her status as a teaching-professional. Her level of pay was illustrated by the author who wrote “Sara was not well paid. There were days when she had very little—once only one slice of bread—to divide among her two daughters and three sons”.
Jaime was a creative teacher and his techniques both amused and intrigued his soon to be wife. The author writes “She was studying to become a teacher, and she was intrigued with the unusual ways Jaime figured out his mathematics problems. One of her friends was struggling in math, and she asked Jaime to show them his special techniques.” “You have a funny way of doing things,” she smiled.
Escalante was also very specific in his execution as a teacher. The author writes “Everything about him—his exaggerated facial expressions, his classroom theatrics, his sarcastic barbs—everything was calculated to push his students to the peak of performance”. “Even Escalante’s clothes figured in his teaching methodology.”
IV. Setting
A. The story takes place from his birth in 1930 to modern day Los Angeles where he began the Calculus – intensive teaching methodology to his final teaching assignment at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California in 1991.
B. Jaime Escalante traveled half way around the world to share his remarkable gift in America. One wonders how he might have impacted Bolivia if he had remained there.
C. This story could have taken place at different times from a historical perspective. Northern teachers with less narrow views of the world might have had a profound effect on the children of the deep-south during the pre-Civil War era had they been given entre to southern students willing to hear dissenting viewpoints on slavery. A student from an all-black school might have been shocked to suddenly attend a segregated school on the West Coast during the late 1950’s. Teachers have profound effects when they speak things that stimulate students in any era.
V. Conflict: Escalante’s main problem at the heart of the story is getting students to believe in him and themselves. As a child who was constantly scolded in Bolivian public schools he must have reveled in the freedom given to teachers in this country and the access to both students and their parents given to those same educators.
VI. Resolution: The problem is solved with determination, discipline, hard-work, and success. Escalante created the ganas or desire to accomplish the most difficult of task against opposition from faculty and students by having the guts to try something different.
VII. Vocabulary
A. Discipline
1. Definition: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character; control gained by enforcing obedience or order; orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior; self-control; a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity.
2. “The discipline Escalante brought to his work resulted in suggestions and innovations that saved Burroughs a considerable amount of money.” P. 61
B. Determination
1. Definition: the act of deciding definitely and firmly, also; the result of such an act or decision; firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end; a fixing or finding of the position, magnitude, value, or character of something; the definition of a concept in logic by its essential constituents:
2. “Escalante could not afford to wait until he mastered the language before getting a job.” “His brother-in-law had not been able to find work for him, so he set out himself, armed with little English, but a lot of determination.” P. 48
C. Hard work
1. Definition: activity in which one exerts maximum strength, energy, or faculties to do or perform something; sustained, maximum physical or mental effort to overcome an obstacle and achieve an objective or result; a specific, difficult task, duty, function, or assignment often being a part or phase of some larger activity.
2. “He lectured on the importance of hard work.” “An employer will not want to hear your problems,” he predicted. “An employer would care only how hard they were willing to work.” P. 77
D. Success
1. Definition: the degree or measure of accomplishment; favorable or desired outcome; the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.
2. “An eighty percent success rate was wonderful, especially for the first time anyone passed an A.P. calculus test in the school’s history and considering all the hurdles the class had to face.” “But Escalante was not satisfied.” “He was determined to include more students the following year.” P.83
VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism; I have no criticism of the book because it reflects a real person with extraordinary vision and leadership. Jaime Escalante did what no one before him had done; he brought real, constructive change to Garfield High School and the change was pervasive. I’m quite sure that many of the teachers cringed when he was forced to leave for another school because they realized that they might be ushering in another season of academic futility. Some people may not have cared who got the credit, and the students certainly were less likely to achieve their previous levels of success in the A.P calculus exam without Escalante’s assistance and inspiration.
The author used vivid imagery to create the scenes from Escalante’s life in the book. Her vivid depiction of him attaching wheels to a board as a child and later collecting what his mother referred to as junk evoked some of my own childhood memories. I to believed that the “junk” my mother viewed was treasure to be protected at all cost. The author also used photographs effectively to document the periods as art forms to showcase a different time and place that I could not envision without seeing certain elements displayed like Escalante’s clothing and military uniforms.
In the section on playing defense, Escalante’s quote is visceral as the author tells us that he “explodes in anger”. “You’re chasing a black cat in a dark room,’ he spat as he stormed out fully suffices a near-profane-tirade from this sensitive, scholarly gentleman whom we’ve seen somber, playful, and merely offended previously.
B. Recommendation: I would recommend the book and the movie though I haven’t seen the movie lately. Edward James Olmos does a more than credible job of creating the personage of Escalante without turning him into a caricature and the ensemble cast help to make the movie reflect the values spoken of in the biography.
You get a sense of the overwhelming dread Escalante must have felt when he saw the miserable plight of the students and remembered his mother trying to feed five of her children with one piece of bread. That memory would make anyone work three or four jobs rather than repeat that experience.
Title of Novel
I. Author
A. Lifespan: Ann Byers is a Mother and Grandmother who has worked in ministry with Youth for Christ since 1983.
B. Ann Byers seems to eschew having her own biographical information published beyond the brief information posted on the Youth for Christ website. Unfortunately, her date of birth is not given.
C. Relevant facts: She began serving her community and fellow-man by witnessing in neighborhoods to young people. She has served in numerous positions within the ministry-outreach and currently works with disadvantaged teenagers and their children. Many of the books that she writes address issues faced by these young people that she has faithfully served for nearly three decades.
D. She was born in Virginia, raised in St. Louis, and lived and worked for a period of years on a Navajo reservation in
Arizona. She moved to California in 1969 and began living in Fresno in 1976.
E. Some of Ann’s most important works include books devoted to instructing young people in the best ways to manage
their lives and finances. Books like First Credit Cards and Credit Smarts (Get Smart With Your Money), Sexually Transmitted Diseases: A Hot Issue, Great Resume, Application, and Interview Skills (Work Readiness), First Apartment Smarts (Get Smart With Your Money), Frequently Asked Questions About Puberty (Faq: Teen Life: Set1), and Teens and Pregnancy (A Hot Issue) all relate to her commitment to her fellow men and her decision to serve the youth in her area. The topics of her books reveal an amazing degree of awareness about the topics and a sense of familiarity with the challenges faced by the young people she reaches out to in ministry.
F. It’s almost counter-intuitive to think that Ann Byers only writes about the problems faced by youth because she empathizes with them. The more likely view is that she has either faced these issues herself, has gained a wealth of knowledge about the travails of youth in America by seeing so many of them overcome their unique situational challenges, or both.
Brief plot summary: Jaime Escalante was born on December 31, 1930 and is still active in his chosen vocation. Jaime’s parents were teachers assigned to a rural area with few modern conveniences in southwestern Bolivia. Their teaching assignment was to go to the remote village of Achacachi, which was located at a high elevation in the Andes Mountains. The village where Jaime would be born was established near the shores of Lake Titicaca.
Poverty was the norm for people in this area and the nearest town with decent medical care was four hours away, down winding, bumpy roads in the city of La Paz. So Jaime grew up with the village children and remained in Achacachi until he was nine years old. At that point, his parents separated and his mother moved with her children to La Paz which was overwhelming to young Jaime because of the large number of people living there. He also began attending a formal school where his hyper-active nature caused him to have many visits to the head of the schools for counseling and discipline.
As an adolescent, Jaime began to show unusual promise as a student in the area of mathematics and even exceeded the prowess of his own mother who taught him as a child and helped him with his homework. When he was convinced to take the college entrance exam by his best friend he scored the highest of all those tested in the physics and mathematics categories. So he was approached during his second year at Normal Superior College by a previous math tutor who was now a professor and academic director of many schools in the area to assist in preparing presentations for students and later to teach incoming students physics.
Later he accepted a teaching position at a new school for boys and was soon married to a woman who encouraged him to move to America for the sake of his family and his career. Though he loved teaching young Bolivians, he was compelled to move to the United States by the late 1960’s and was forced to return to college to attain his “American” teaching certification and an under-graduate degree. That degree led him to Garfield High School in East Los Angeles.
Ultimately, his teaching style and determination to help young people succeed led to him helping many students to pass the Advanced Placement (A.P.) Calculus Exam for entry into college.
Relevant facts
II. In the story Jaime Escalante is forced to overcome every manner of adversity imaginable. He had to learn new languages, once in his native country when he left the small villages in the Andes Mountains and again when he came to America to begin again in a career that he excelled in at home. He later became an entry-level employee at the Burroughs Corporation, an electronics manufacturing plant. He progressed through the ranks until he became a senior tester who worked directly with the company’s engineers.
He was awarded the prestigious National Science Foundation Scholarship. This was his entrée to a teaching position which he had coveted since he left the small country of Bolivia after teaching ten years in gender-separate schools for boys only. Escalante became a leader at Garfield High and led a mathematics renaissance that led to changes in the class curriculums and changes in him also.
III. Jaime Escalante believed in testing himself as much as he believed in testing his students. He drove himself to physical exhaustion and illness in his relentless quest to accomplish that which was deemed impossible. The challenge drove him to expect more than had ever been demanded of students before and required him to give more than any teacher had ever sacrificed before. His intimacy with his students was palpable and they simultaneously loved him and disdained him because of his obsession with success. He was driven to see them succeed academically.
He began with fourteen students in 1978 but only five took the A.P. exam. He was disappointed when only four passed, so he re-doubled his efforts and began to enlist the assistance of other teachers. In 1979 eight of ten students passed the exam which still didn’t satisfy Jaime Escalante. The next group of students, the following year, signed a contract and their parents were encouraged to support their children in this great endeavor. In 1980 fourteen of fifteen students passed the A.P. Calculus Exam and the next year Jaime was elected to chair the math department at Garfield High.
IV. The primary characters in the story are Jaime Escalante, the people that taught him, and the people he taught. His grandfather taught him to read and count in his native Bolivia when he was just a boy. He was a retired teacher and discovered that Jaime loved riddles, puzzles, and creative games. Umberto Bilbao was one of Escalante’s elementary school teachers and discovered that Jaime loved mathematics, and his mother, Sara Escalante, taught him fractions by slicing up pieces of fruit into various quantities representing fractional equivalents. Sara also taught Jaime about “ganas” or desire. In the army he learned to barter and negotiate for food and other items that he needed.
Fabiola Tapia taught him to be a better husband than his father was. She also taught him to expand his horizons and goals such that he traveled to America to create a new future he might never have had otherwise. She was not only his wife but a teacher herself. Later he developed his life-philosophy which centered around four guiding principles:
1. Determination – his ganas led him to long above all else to become a teacher;
2. Discipline – his lessons and studies were always a priority in his life which gave him organization;
3. Hard Work – he always held at least three jobs simultaneously, and had four at one point;
4. Success – eventually he had a beautiful family, a home that he loved, and the career he desired.
Later his brother, Sam Tapia, taught him the value of transportation so he purchased a new Volkswagon. He also taught Escalante to think of travel in terms of time required to make the journey, rather than distance. This became very important in a mega-city like Los Angeles. He went to the YMCA and junior college to learn English and learned from his ambitionless co-worker at Van de Kamp’s Coffee Shop to never settle for mediocrity. Finally, Escalante learned that American college professors care very little for their students when he was told to drop a class because he was unlikely to pass it due to his accent.
Other important characters include the employees and management at Burroughs Corporation, the instructors at the University of Southern California, the professor from California State University who pointed him to the National Science Foundation scholarship, and his students at Garfield High School
B. The characters in the story all impact Escalante’s perception of his surroundings or his perception of himself. His wife knew he would never leave Bolivia without prodding because of his sense of duty. She also correctly surmised that he would prefer to remain a busboy making near minimum wage rather than work for Burroughs unless it appealed to him as a means to shorten the distance to his teaching career. She wanted him to make more money and he did, so they both got a return-on-investment. The professor that required him to drop the class drove him to become a teacher that never gave up on his students, no matter the cost to him personally. The students learned to expand their goals and be led by ganas to strive for the so-called impossible. They become more than they were expected to be because he believed in them.
C. Development: The author does spend some time developing the relationships between Escalante and his mother as well as the relationships with his wife and students. Jaime’s mother was poverty-stricken despite her status as a teaching-professional. Her level of pay was illustrated by the author who wrote “Sara was not well paid. There were days when she had very little—once only one slice of bread—to divide among her two daughters and three sons”.
Jaime was a creative teacher and his techniques both amused and intrigued his soon to be wife. The author writes “She was studying to become a teacher, and she was intrigued with the unusual ways Jaime figured out his mathematics problems. One of her friends was struggling in math, and she asked Jaime to show them his special techniques.” “You have a funny way of doing things,” she smiled.
Escalante was also very specific in his execution as a teacher. The author writes “Everything about him—his exaggerated facial expressions, his classroom theatrics, his sarcastic barbs—everything was calculated to push his students to the peak of performance”. “Even Escalante’s clothes figured in his teaching methodology.”
IV. Setting
A. The story takes place from his birth in 1930 to modern day Los Angeles where he began the Calculus – intensive teaching methodology to his final teaching assignment at Hiram Johnson High School in Sacramento, California in 1991.
B. Jaime Escalante traveled half way around the world to share his remarkable gift in America. One wonders how he might have impacted Bolivia if he had remained there.
C. This story could have taken place at different times from a historical perspective. Northern teachers with less narrow views of the world might have had a profound effect on the children of the deep-south during the pre-Civil War era had they been given entre to southern students willing to hear dissenting viewpoints on slavery. A student from an all-black school might have been shocked to suddenly attend a segregated school on the West Coast during the late 1950’s. Teachers have profound effects when they speak things that stimulate students in any era.
V. Conflict: Escalante’s main problem at the heart of the story is getting students to believe in him and themselves. As a child who was constantly scolded in Bolivian public schools he must have reveled in the freedom given to teachers in this country and the access to both students and their parents given to those same educators.
VI. Resolution: The problem is solved with determination, discipline, hard-work, and success. Escalante created the ganas or desire to accomplish the most difficult of task against opposition from faculty and students by having the guts to try something different.
VII. Vocabulary
A. Discipline
1. Definition: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character; control gained by enforcing obedience or order; orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior; self-control; a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity.
2. “The discipline Escalante brought to his work resulted in suggestions and innovations that saved Burroughs a considerable amount of money.” P. 61
B. Determination
1. Definition: the act of deciding definitely and firmly, also; the result of such an act or decision; firm or fixed intention to achieve a desired end; a fixing or finding of the position, magnitude, value, or character of something; the definition of a concept in logic by its essential constituents:
2. “Escalante could not afford to wait until he mastered the language before getting a job.” “His brother-in-law had not been able to find work for him, so he set out himself, armed with little English, but a lot of determination.” P. 48
C. Hard work
1. Definition: activity in which one exerts maximum strength, energy, or faculties to do or perform something; sustained, maximum physical or mental effort to overcome an obstacle and achieve an objective or result; a specific, difficult task, duty, function, or assignment often being a part or phase of some larger activity.
2. “He lectured on the importance of hard work.” “An employer will not want to hear your problems,” he predicted. “An employer would care only how hard they were willing to work.” P. 77
D. Success
1. Definition: the degree or measure of accomplishment; favorable or desired outcome; the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.
2. “An eighty percent success rate was wonderful, especially for the first time anyone passed an A.P. calculus test in the school’s history and considering all the hurdles the class had to face.” “But Escalante was not satisfied.” “He was determined to include more students the following year.” P.83
VIII. Personal criticism and recommendation
A. Criticism; I have no criticism of the book because it reflects a real person with extraordinary vision and leadership. Jaime Escalante did what no one before him had done; he brought real, constructive change to Garfield High School and the change was pervasive. I’m quite sure that many of the teachers cringed when he was forced to leave for another school because they realized that they might be ushering in another season of academic futility. Some people may not have cared who got the credit, and the students certainly were less likely to achieve their previous levels of success in the A.P calculus exam without Escalante’s assistance and inspiration.
The author used vivid imagery to create the scenes from Escalante’s life in the book. Her vivid depiction of him attaching wheels to a board as a child and later collecting what his mother referred to as junk evoked some of my own childhood memories. I to believed that the “junk” my mother viewed was treasure to be protected at all cost. The author also used photographs effectively to document the periods as art forms to showcase a different time and place that I could not envision without seeing certain elements displayed like Escalante’s clothing and military uniforms.
In the section on playing defense, Escalante’s quote is visceral as the author tells us that he “explodes in anger”. “You’re chasing a black cat in a dark room,’ he spat as he stormed out fully suffices a near-profane-tirade from this sensitive, scholarly gentleman whom we’ve seen somber, playful, and merely offended previously.
B. Recommendation: I would recommend the book and the movie though I haven’t seen the movie lately. Edward James Olmos does a more than credible job of creating the personage of Escalante without turning him into a caricature and the ensemble cast help to make the movie reflect the values spoken of in the biography.
You get a sense of the overwhelming dread Escalante must have felt when he saw the miserable plight of the students and remembered his mother trying to feed five of her children with one piece of bread. That memory would make anyone work three or four jobs rather than repeat that experience.
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