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8 Lang-Lit: Book Discussions

Esperanza Rising

Goodreads Summary:

When Esperanza and Mama are forced to flee to the bountiful region of Aguascalientes, Mexico, to a Mexican farm labor camp in California, they must adjust to a life without fancy dresses adn servants they were accustomed to on Rancho de las Rosas. Now they must confront the challenges of hard work, acceptance by their own people, and economic difficulties brought on by the Great Depression. When Mama falls ill and a strike for better working conditions threatens to uproot their new life, Esperanza must relinquish her hold on the past learn to embrace a future ripe with the riches of family and community.

Historical Context:

  • "The events of Esperanza Rising straddle two major historical moments of the 20th century, the first being the late years and fallout of the Mexican Revolution, which broke out in 1910 and introduced a period of rebellion, civil war, and struggle between the wealthy landowners and the impoverished masses of Mexico. Esperanza’s wealthy rancher father’s death in an attack by “bandits,” then, is alluded to as a politically-motivated attack symbolically suggesting the hatred, jealousy, and anger that was directed at landowners at the time. When Esperanza and her family flee to California for a better life, they find themselves smack in the middle of the Great Depression, a staggering financial crisis that affected the entire globe, and whose effects in America resulted in the displacement of countless individuals as they fought one another for opportunities at farms and work camps across the nation. Muñoz Ryan also uses her novel to call attention to lesser-known historical events from the time period: the rise of strikes in the California agricultural fields during the 1930s, as well as the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930s and 40s. An act of federal legislation called the Deportation Act allowed the Immigration Bureau, through “sweeps” across the valleys and farms of California, to deport upwards of half a million Mexicans and Mexican-Americans." (LitCharts)

Migrant Farm Workers, in the News:

Video: The debate on child farm labor

 

Map of crops in California 

Refugee

Goodreads Summary:

Three different kids.
One mission in common: ESCAPE.

Josef is a Jewish boy in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world…

Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety and freedom in America…

Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe…

All three young people will go on harrowing journeys in search of refuge. All will face unimaginable dangers–from drownings to bombings to betrayals. But for each of them, there is always the hope of tomorrow. And although Josef, Isabel, and Mahmoud are separated by continents and decades, surprising connections will tie their stories together in the end.

Themes to Explore:

  • Trauma & Coming of Age
  • Injustice and Cruelty vs. Empathy and Social Responsibility
  • Hope vs. Despair
  • Family, Displacement, and Culture
  • Invisibility & The Refugee Experience

Historical Context of the Three Settings:

  • Josef: Nazi Germany just before WWII

"The MS St. Louis, on which Josef is a passenger in the novel, was a real ship that set sail from Nazi Germany to Cuba in 1939. When they arrived, they were told they would not be allowed to land, and were sent back to Europe. Only the Jews who were allowed to enter Britain were able to escape the Holocaust. Of the 620 Jewish refugees on the ship who returned to continental Europe, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that 254 of them were killed in the Holocaust." (LitCharts)

  • Isabel: Post Cold War Cuba

"In Cuba in 1994, due to the recent collapse of the Soviet Union and the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, hungry citizens rioted in Havana. In response, Cuban president Fidel Castro announced that anyone who wanted to leave Cuba could do so without being thrown in jail—the lifting of this policy is what allows Isabel’s to flee the country in Refugee. In the five weeks following this policy announcement, an estimated 35,000 people fled the island for  the United States. U.S. president Bill Clinton announced that any Cuban refugees caught at sea would be sent to Guantanamo Bay, while any Cuban refugees who made it to America could remain there (the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy). Thousands of Cuban people continue to flood the United States every year." (LitCharts)

  • Mahmoud: Syrian Civil War after the Arab Spring

"Following the Arab Spring (a series of anti-government protests and revolutions in the Middle East) in 2011, Syria has experienced a brutal civil war, leaving the city of Aleppo in ruins. According to the United Nations, as of 2017, more than 470,000 people have been killed. More than 10 million Syrians have been displaced from their homes, and an estimated 4.8 million Syrians have left their country as refugees. Many have settled in other Middle Eastern countries, and millions more (like Mahmoud and his family in the novel) try to reach Europe, which has accepted hundreds of thousands of refugees. By contrast, between 2011 and 2016, the United States admitted only 18,007 Syrian refugees. On January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending the entry of all Syrian refugees into the United States. The executive order has been altered slightly, but remains upheld as of 2019." (LitCharts)

Cuban Migration:

(via The Economist)

WWII Migration:

Videos

Syrian Migration:

(via BuzzFeed)

The Night Diary

Goodreads Summary:

It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders.

Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.

Told through Nisha's letters to her mother, The Night Diary is a heartfelt story of one girl's search for home, for her own identity...and for a hopeful future.

Themes:

  • Survival
  • Family
  • Religious Beliefs

Setting:

  • "Mirpur Khas is the town Nisha and Amil were born in and where their family lives prior to the partition of India into two new, smaller states, India and Pakistan. The town is representative of life prior to the partition, when Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs all lived together in the same space and shared daily elements of their lives despite differing ethnoreligious identities. However, following the partition, Mirpur Khas, like the 'old' India more generally, begins to fall apart. The town is wracked by violence, intracommunal tension, and political turmoil which culminates in Hindu residents fleeing for their lives. Amil and Nisha love Mirpur Khas, but they, too, begin to feel ostracized and targeted when children from the town begin to bully them on the basis of their identities." (Book Rags)

Video: What was "Partition"?

Articles & Resources about Partition:

Videos:

Post-Partition Map