CU: Crculo de lectores

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CU Círculo de lectores

• Segundo Semestre 2009

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Tortilla Curtain
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• The Tortilla Curtain is the story of two couples
  who have nothing in common except the fact that
  they live in the same area. Cándido (a divorcee)
  and América (a young woman) are two Mexicans who
  have entered the United States illegally and who
  are dreaming of the good life in their own little
  house somewhere in California. Meanwhile, they
  are homeless and camping in the Topanga Canyon
  area of Los Angeles, in the hills above Malibu.
  Another couple, Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, have
  also recently moved to Topanga, in order to be
  closer to nature yet be close enough to the city
  to enjoy those amenities. Kyra is a successful
  real estate agent while Delaney keeps house,
  looks after Kyra's son by her first marriage and
  writes a regular column for an environmentalist
  magazine.
• The two couples' paths cross unexpectedly when
  Cándido is hit and injured by Delaney, who is
  driving his car along the suburban roads near his
  home. For different reasons, each man prefers not
  to call the police or an ambulance, and Delaney
  soothes his conscience by giving Cándido "20
  blood money," explaining to Kyra that "He's a
  Mexican." From that moment on, the lifes of the
  two couples are constantly influenced by the
  other's.
• After the accident, Cándido's problems deepen.
  With América pregnant, his shame at not being
  able to get a job and procure a home and food for
  his family increases, especially when América
  decides to find some illegaland possibly
  dangerouswork herself. At one point in the
  novel, they are forced to go through the trash
  cans behind a convenience store so as not to
  starve.
• The Mossbachers are also having problems, though
  of an altogether different nature. Comfortably
  settled in their new home, they are faced with
  the cruelty of nature when one of their two pet
  dogs is killed by a coyote. In addition, the
  majority of inhabitants of their exclusive estate
  feel increasingly disturbed and threatened by the
  presence ofas they see itpotentially criminal,
  illegal aliens and vote for a wall to be built
  around the whole estate.
• Cándido has a stroke of luck when he is given a
  free turkey at a grocery store by another
  customer, who has just received it through the
  store's Thanksgiving promotion. When Cándido
  starts roasting the bird back in their shelter,
  he inadvertently causes a fire which spreads so
  quickly that even the gated community the
  Mossbachers live in has to be evacuated.
• In the midst of the escalating disasters, América
  gives birth to a daughter, whom she suspects
  might be blind. But the couple has no money to
  have little Socorro (Spanish help) examined by a
  doctor.
• Time and again in the novel, however, it is
  hinted at that the real perpetrators can be found
  inside rather than outside the projected wall
  well-to-do people insensitive to the plight of
  the have-nots WASP racists afraid of being
  overrun by Latinos and of the end of white
  supremacy business people employing illegal
  immigrants to maximise their own profit without
  caring for the welfare of those who work for
  them and criminals posing as honourable members
  of society.

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How the Gracia Girls Lost Their Accents
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• How the García Girls Lost Their Accents is a 1991
  novel written by Dominican-American poet,
  novelist, and essayist Julia Alvarez. Told in
  reverse chronological order and narrated from
  shifting perspectives, the text possesses
  distinct qualities of a bildungsroman novel.
  Spanning more than thirty years in the lives of
  four sisters, the story begins with their adult
  lives in the United States and ends with their
  childhood in the Dominican Republic, from which
  their family was forced to flee due to the
  fathers opposition to Rafael Leónidas Trujillo's
  dictatorship.
• The novel's major themes include acculturation
  and coming of age. It deals with the myriad
  hardships of immigration, painting a vivid
  picture of the struggle to assimilate, the sense
  of displacement, and the confusion of identity
  suffered by the García family, as they are
  uprooted from familiarity and forced to begin a
  new life in New York City. The text consists of
  fifteen interconnected short stories, each of
  which focuses on one of the four daughters, and
  in a few instances, the García family as a whole.
  Although it is told from alternating perspectives
  there is particular focus throughout the text on
  the character of Yolanda, who is said to be the
  both the protagonist and the author's alter ego.

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Enriques Journey
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• In this astonishing true story, award-winning
  journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the
  unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who
  braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach
  his mother in the United States. When Enrique
  is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor
  to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in
  the United States. The move allows her to send
  money back home to Enrique so he can eat better
  and go to school past the third grade.Lourdes
  promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she
  struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his
  mother to come back. Without her, he becomes
  lonely and troubled. When she calls, Lourdes
  tells him to be patient. Enrique despairs of ever
  seeing her again. After eleven years apart, he
  decides he will go find her.Enrique sets off
  alone from Tegucigalpa, with little more than a
  slip of paper bearing his mother's North Carolina
  telephone number. Without money, he will make the
  dangerous and illegal trek up the length of
  Mexico the only way he can clinging to the
  sides and tops of freight trains.With gritty
  determination and a deep longing to be by his
  mother's side, Enrique travels through hostile,
  unknown worlds. Each step of the way through
  Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them
  children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters
  control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and
  kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt
  cops all along the route are out to fleece and
  deport them. To evade Mexican police and
  immigration authorities, they must jump onto and
  off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la
  Muerte- The Train of Death. Enrique pushes
  forward using his wit, courage, and hope - and
  the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey,
  one thousands of immigrant children make each
  year to find their mothers in the United
  States.Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper
  series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for
  feature writing and another for feature
  photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless
  story of families torn apart, the yearning to be
  together again, and a boy who will risk his life
  to find the mother he loves.

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When I was Puerto Rican
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• Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto
  Rico, where her childhood was full of both
  tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds
  and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she
  learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound
  of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the
  taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla,
  and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul
  to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash,
  both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and
  Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of
  nature, takes off to New York with her seven,
  soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the
  oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and
  eventually take on a new identity. In this first
  volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy,
  Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic
  landscape and tumultuous family life of her
  earliest years and her tremendous journey from
  the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her
  mother at the welfare office to high honors at
  Harvard.

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Esperanza Rising
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• Plot Summary
• Esperanza Ortega is a young girl, who grows up in
  Mexico in the 1920's on Rancho de las Rosas, a
  vineyard her family owns. Mexico is recovering
  from the revolution of ten years earlier. There
  is still a great deal of animosity towards the
  rich landowners, who are seen to be uncaring of
  the peasants. The story opens, as she is
  anticipating the harvest of the grapes from their
  vineyard that always coincides with her birthday.
  At the end of the harvest, there is always a
  wonderful fiesta attended by the servants,
  vaqueros, campesinos, and many of the wealthy
  families in the area. The afternoon before the
  iLa cosecha, or harvest ceremony, Esperanza cuts
  her finger on a rose thorn, while she is
  gathering roses for table decorations the next
  day. As she is thinking this.....