Our Read Aloud last week was a book called
Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan. It was one of those books that wowed me! What an awesome read! Let me start out by sharing a bit about the storyline and then I will share why I loved it so much.
The storyline is set in the early 1920's right before the Great Depression. Esperanza lives in Mexico with her mother, father, and grandmother. She is an only child. Her father owns and runs a large ranch and they are wealthy with servants and workers that help run the farm. Their housekeeper and the man that is in charge of all of their workers on their farm are married and have become good friends with her mom and dad despite the different levels of classes between them. They have one son, Miguel who Esperanza is good friends with. Esperanzas father may be wealthy but he is good to people and always eager to help out those who need the help. Trouble brews in Mexico at this time however and bandits are constantly threatening to harm those around them. On the eve before Esperanzas 13th birthday her father does not return home like normal. His body is later found, murdered by bandits at the edge of his farm. Her father has two brothers but they are evil. They run the local banks and at the reading of her fathers will she and her mother learn that her father has left the house and vineyards to her mother but the land it is on to her uncles. One of the Uncles tries to trick Esperanzas mother into marrying him. When she refuses he starts a fire at there house one evening that burns it and the vineyards to the ground and tells them that he will bring more harm to them if she doesn't marry him. Esperanza and her mother have no choice but to leave Mexico and go to California where they try to begin a new life for themselves. Esperanzas grandmother is harmed in the fire and cannot travel so she stays behind in Mexico with the promise that she will come to California to be with them as soon as she is able. They travel to California with the housekeeper, her husband, and their son Miquel who has family that is already in California. Their family helps to line up jobs for them working as Mexican immigrant workers on farms in Arvin, California.
The rest of the story is about challenges that Esperanza faces as she is forced to grow up much quicker than she ever dreamed she would have to. Her mother works the fields with the other farm workers and Esperanza is in charge of staying at the camp and helping to care for babies and do chores all day long. She is now living in a small hut with 5 other people, that has newspapers on the wall to keep the dust and wind out, and she sleeps on a cot on the floor. Later in the story, Esperanza has to take a job working in the packing sheds which was very difficult work, especially for a young girl.
One of the many reasons I fell in love with this book is because I was born and raised in Bakersfield/Tehachapi, California which is about 30 minutes away from Arvin where the setting of this book took place. My grandparents lived in Lamont, CA which sits right next to Arvin. I cannot tell you how often I drove past some of the very same farm fields that many of these immigrant workers worked at on my way out to visit my grandparents. I have memories of the workers in the fields working. My parents were both raised in Arvin and graduated from Arvin highschool. My Granny and her sister, my Aunt Lil, worked in packing sheds just like Esperanza and her mother end up working in, in this story. The author of the book, Pam Muzoz Ryan, was born in Bakersfield as well and this story is based on a true story about her own grandmother. I think that was another reason that it touched my heart. While this is a piece of a fiction that fiction is based on real facts from her Grandmothers past. I also believe this is one of the reasons that this story so accurately portrays the "Valley". The Valley is what the area of Bakersfield and Arvin is called because the city of Bakersfield sits literally in the San Joaquin Valley which is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides. You might be surprised to learn that most of our nations produce comes from the farms in the San Joaquin Valley. Most people do not realize that.
In the story, Esperanzas mother comes down with Valley Fever after a dust storm hits. Valley Fever is a lung infection from spores that get into your lungs from the dust, that can kill you if it becomes serious enough. Valley Fever is very common within the San Joaquin Valley area and also common in other dry, dusty, climates like Arizona. It is said that anyone that lives in the "Valley" for any length of time has had Valley Fever at one point or another whether they knew it or not. Sometimes you carry the infection and your symptoms never become serious enough so that you don't ever even know you were even sick. Other times, your symptoms can worsen to the point of you becoming very sick and even needing to be hospitalized. And sometimes, Valley Fever can kill you. Especially if serious symptoms are left untreated. Bryan and I have a very dear friend from Bakersfield named Dan and Valley Fever has come close to killing him on several occasions. My dear friend Linda who lives in AZ has a young son who came down with Valley Fever last year. Poor Sam had a really bad case of it and gave us all quit a scare. Since Bryan and I were both raised in the Valley the probabilty that we have at one point in our lifetime had Valley Fever is very high. We have been told that once you have it, it is less likely that you will catch it again, or at least not a hard case of it. Your body becomes immune to it. In that regard it reminds me of Chicken pox. Some people can catch it a second time around (our friend Dan being an example) but most people will not. When the author of this book who was raised in the Valley as well, went to have her blood work done when she was getting married, the doctor called her and left a message that something was wrong on her blood work. When she called him back he said "It appears according to your blood work that you tested positive for Valley Fever". She said "Of course I did, I was raised in the Valley"!
Bryan and I talk a lot to the kids about the culture out west and what life was like for him and I growing up out there because life is so different for them being raised here in the deep South. I realized though as we were reading this book that Valley Fever was something we had never discussed with the kids. They didn't know what it was. They remember their friend Sam being sick but I must not have explained to them at the time exactly what was wrong with him. They thought it was very interesting that their were infections you could get from living in certain areas that were unheard of in other parts of our country. On our next visit out to California with the kids, we will have to watch them for symptoms of Valley Fever since they have never been exposed to it. Thankfully, we will be visiting at the end of Winter when the spores won't be as rampid as they are during mid-Summer. When Esperanzas mother becomes deathly sick from Valley Fever and is hospitalized she is taken to Kern General Hospital which is the hospital I just happen to be born at! The kids and I got a kick out that when we read it and I told them!
One of my favorite parts of this story was Ryans descriptions of the Valley. I couldn't help but think that for someone who has never been to the Valley, Ryans descriptions would give them such a vivid picture of that area. I appreciated that so much as I was reading it to the kids. She did such a beautiful job of describing so many aspects of my hometown and it's history. I am proud of where I was born and raised. Though God hasn't called us to raise our own kids there and due to the high cost of living we are thankful for that, The Valley still holds a special place in both Bryan and mines heart because it's where we spent the first half of our lives. It's where we met and married. It's where our lives began. Many of our family members still live there. Our closest life long friends live there. It's a part of OUR history just as it is apart of Pam Munoz Ryans history as well.
Just like most states, not all of Californias History is something we can be proud of, it is still History though. The book touches on a portion of history that took place in California that many people may not be familiar with. I'm referring to The Deporation of close to 400,000 Hispanic people to Mexico (some historians agree that the number was much higher). You see at the rise of the Great Depression everyone headed west to California for work. One of the things this book discusses is how there were farm camps for the Okies, Japanese, Hispanics, and more. They seperated camps by races and the locations that they came from because they thought it would help to not stir up protests over the living conditions in camps. Some camps were better than others, though none were great. As more and more people began coming into California though workers that had been working the farms for years were faced with a dilema. People were desperate for work and were willing to work for very little. Many people were layed off of work and the farmers would hire new hands that they could pay less too. Protests began for better wages and better living conditions, though not everyone protested. Esperanza was in a camp that did not protest. They needed the work they had and did not want to stir up trouble for fear of loosing their jobs. Esperanza did understand though why some were protesting. My own family immigrated to California from Oklahoma during this very time period. Yup- I come from a line of Okies. ;-) Pam Munoz Ryans father also immigrated from Oklahoma and her mother's side of the family was from Mexico. Ryan paints a very clear picture of the conflict that took place among the farm workers and camps as well as the conditions they lived in. She also brings to light this piece of history where people of Hispanic origin were rounded up, put on trains, and sent to Mexico. The problem is, many of those Hispanics that were rounded up and sent to Mexico were U.S. Citizens. They had been born and raised in the U.S. and had never even been to Mexico until our government sent them their. The government in CA thought this would be a way to deal with the overwhelming number of people that were trying to get jobs working as farm hands but it really didn't help the problem. It only tore families apart and tore people from the only country they had ever known as home. It was a sad situation. Often the police would come in and do a sweep, especially in areas where workers were protesting, and they wouldn't even bother to look at the farm workers papers. They didn't care if they were citizens, they just sent them on to Mexico. Pam Munoz Ryan shares in the authors notes in the back of the book that years later her grandmother would still break out in a sweat when she had to show her passport for anything for fear that she could easily be uprooted and sent back to Mexico on a whim. That broke my heart!
I appreciated greatly that Ryan touched on this bit of California history in Esperanza Rising. Bryan and I both went through the CA public school systems and to college in CA and neither of us were ever taught about the Great Deportation Act in the 1920's-30's. I found that to be pretty sad since it was obviously a big part of CA history, though obviously not a proud part. As you can imagine I began doing some research after learning about it through this book (and the authors notes) and I can tell you that their is a wealth of info on the net about it. I found
THIS article from 2006 to be very interesting. It's about why some history (such as the Deportation Act of the 20'-30's) is so hard to get into textbooks today and would explain how Bryan and I both could have gone through our years of school in California without having ever learned about this piece of our states history. I will also add that reading that article will make you thankful once again for the freedom and opportunity to homeschool. I cringe at most textbooks as it is, and that article made me cringe as I read about the bueracy of textbooks. I also found
THIS article to be very interesting and thought you might want to read it as well. I am thankful that the kids and I had a chance to learn about it from Esperanza Rising and it was another reminder to me of just how important reading is (not that I needed another reminder). :-) It's so important though that we are reading good, living books, to our kids constantly. Their is just so much to learn from them! How else will they, and we for that matter, continue to learn if we don't invest time in reading?
I am sure it won't surprise you that I would highly recommend this book! My recommendation comes not just because of my own relationship to it but becauase I believe it is one of the best pieces of Fiction based on historical facts out there that pertains to the Valley in California as well as the bit of history that surrounds that area. I found several lessons plans online for the book but it would be very easy to write your own as well. I would recommend checking out
Pam Munoz Ryans site to learn even more about Esperanza Rising. I'm so very thankful that my friend
Shonda recommended this book to me several years ago and I am thankful that our family had the opportunity to read it.
