Parrot in the Oven : mi vida

Rating:
Summary: HARDSHIPS
Review: A drunken, unemployed father, a submissive mother, and a journey to finding himself in a world still so mysterious to him: this is the life of Manuel Hernandez, a fourteen year old boy in Victor Martinez National Book Award winning novel, "Parrot in the Oven". This novel awoke something inside me and enlightens me to the real troubles this young boy experiences on his path on becoming a man.
This incredible story takes place in the projects where poverty is not abnormal. Manuel and his family live the established "accepted" Chicano life in which the macho father controls the subservient wife, who in turn supports her husband blindly. Manuel experiences domestic violence, racism, and is made an outcast among others. These events generates the dramatic and powerful novel into a must read for any. When Manny's father crosses the line by trying to kill his wife, Manuel must decide what path he will take, the path on which his father travels, or his own path that will lead him to become a better man than his father.
This novel is perhaps one of the most powerful and heart felt novels I have read. I witnessed, the life of a young adolescent Chicano mature throughout the novel into a more strong, confident, and inspirational character, which motivated me to read more into the novel just to see how this young boy Manuel will overcome all of life's challenges. Parrot in the Oven is the perfect novel for anyone wanting to read something inspiring or for anyone looking for a good novel.

Rating:
Summary: Heart Breaking
Review: A Parrot in the Oven is a novel written by Victor Martinez. This novel is emotional because of the description of the way a boy lives his life with a family full of turmoil and issues. It is about a boy name Manuel Hernandez who has trouble with his family mainly because of his father and mother. Manuel loves to play baseball and also wants to learn to be responsible. He also tries to make the best out of everything for his family. In the novel a Parrot in the Oven, the author uses excellent characterization by explaining the way the narrator and many other characters live their lives and the personality of the characters. Victor Manuel also describes the protagonist's friends and family mates as well as he would describe the main character. The author also makes the story clear and easy to understand for the reader. This makes the reader enjoy what he or she is reading. The author gets right to the point and shows the main conflict through the main character. I feel that a Parrot in the Oven is a magnificent book. I would recommend this book to a person with family issues similar to Manual's in the story and also to kids who get pushed around a lot and are taken for granted because of their disabilities. This book is excellent to read.

Rating:
Summary: It's life
Review: I accept that at first I don't like this book because I think it is boring. But after I had read it for 4-5 chapter I knew that I am wrong. This book is interesting because it contained many interesting issues such as family problem, social life, and teenager problems.

I like the title of this book, " Parrot in the Oven". Although I had already read it, I still don't understand its meaning, if there is no explanation in the book. Parrot or Perico, which is the name, his father called Mannny, sometime. It was from American saying about a parrot that complains how hot it is in the shade, while all along he's sitting inside an oven. People usually say this when talking about ignorant people who don't know where they are at in the world. However Manny does not care it so much because at the end he can find himself. He knows that he belong to his family. So he has to satisfy it and try his best for his family.

" Parrot in the Oven" is a good children book that everyone should read it. It is good at represent the hard life of people. We can see other lives, which are worse than our lives. It could courage us to live in this world because at least we are luckier than they are.

The story shows the difficult life of a Mexican- American family. The main character is a boy named Manny. He is poor but lived in the rich White society. Therefore, he is different from other children. So he has to fight to find out who he is which is a main conflict in the character of the story. A

I really pity on Manny because his parents, siblings and friends often abused him. I wonder why they like to abuse Manny despite he never annoy them. However I appreciate the way Manny deals with those abusive people by trying to get along with the gangs and observe his own family and friends. In my opinion, Manny can be a good example of many children because he can live in the tough family and society by doing trouble. As we see, there are many children in our society that cannot deal with the problem and become social troublemakers.

Besides, I like Manny's mother because she plays the leader role of the family quite well. As we usually think that men are belong to this role but for this family, Manny' father can not be that role because he is a drunkard and can not afford the family. Therefore, his wife has to take this responsibility instead of him, although it is a very hard role to her.

After I had read this book twice time, I missed my family very much because it made me think that family is the most important thing to me. Although my family is not rich and provide many facility things to me as other families, when I am sad or have some problem, I can talk to them and making solutions together.

Rating:
Summary: Parrot in the Oven
Review: I have barly finished reading Parrot In the Oven, to tell you the truth that book was a good book because I had never read a book like that. This book tells the feelings and how he felt and it also made me feel what he was feeling because I understand how it feels. I gave this book 4 stars because it was good but not that because in some parts I got confuced like in the part where the migra comes thin it jumps to a defrent story, but it was still good my best part was when the daa goes looking for Nardos mom but Mr. Hernandez cant find her so he tells his son that were did your mom go and he told him that she went over to sofes to get her hair done but he thought that she was going to leave him so he does looking for his gun he finds it and he over to sofes all drunk when he got ther he tried to shoot her but he does not shoot her and sofe calls thye police and they arest him for atempting murder so yes it was a very good book and what im going to do next is probley one of Victor Martinez Im not shure yet. My family whent through the same thing like them because my dad had to work for his dad because he was sick and he could hardley walk and just to get 300 peso he had to get one tone of pasture in the treilor so I think that my family and his family whent through the same thing so the book was good.

Rating:
Summary: HARDSHIPS
Review: I really enjoyed Parrot in the Oven by Victor Martinez. This book is about a boy named Monolo Hernandez, who lives a difficult life. His father is a drug addict and a drunk. His mother cheats on his father, and his father tried killing her for that. His brothers are mean to him. He thinks the only way of getting over all of this is by joining a gang. The only problem is that Manny doesn't know if that is what he wants to do. He doesn't know if he wants to get into that kind of life. If you want to know what happens to Manny you should read this book. I really enjoyed this book because the author really gets into detail about how gangs really are and how they steal and kill. He goes into detail about all the hardships Manny goes through, you can really feel.

Rating:
Summary: the best of them all
Review: I think that this book is a great book because its based on a true story. Many people now in days came from a poor family which mean that they have to work doing something in order to earn money and live of something. In this case Manny and Nardo came from a family who their parents make them work out in the fields. This family is going threw a lot of dificulties. Such as they father of the family can not sta in a job more than a week because he wastes the money on drinking alcohol. And by doing this he is losing his family. For example when he was drunk and he tried to shoot his wife. In the story Mrs.Hernandez wants her children to go to school and become something better in life. She dosen't want for her kids to end up were she did. She has to work because her own husband can not help out by working. In this case Nardo and Manny had to wrk in the fields for a while to help out. Manny and Nardo had to work in the field without any papers, and their was this one time when the immigration had a trip to the location were they where working at and Nardo and Manny ran. Now in days things in our life are somewhat similar to this. But not quite, our parents encurage us to go to school to get a better education. Therefore i think that this book is the best of them all.

Rating:
Summary: Oven birds
Review: It's hard to review a book that fairly reeks of excellent prose. When you encounter a really GOOD writer, the temptation is to read the pretty words and pay little to no attention to the plot. Victor Martinez fits this category perfectly. Reading, "Parrot in the Oven" is difficult if only because the descriptions in the story are pitch perfect every time. I found myself so continually overwhelmed by the lush characters and interesting metaphors that I would completely forget to pay attention to the narrative and plot. Fortunately, in the case of this particular book, they were perfectly up to snuff.

The tale follows the life and realistic adventures of Mexican-American Manuel Hernandez. Manuel's a good kid. He has a slacker older brother, an older sister that flirts with danger, and a baby sibling that doesn't understand the ways of the world just yet. His father is unemployed leaving him regularly drunk and belligerent. His mother, not quite up to facing the problems surrounding her, stays by his side despite the effects of his actions on the kids. But mostly this is Manny's story. It's a look at a sometimes painful adolescence and the world of classism and racism in which everyone lives. That and it's a beautiful read.

I'll give you a taste of what I'm talking about. For example, after doing painful yard work with his brother the book reads, "When we stopped, finally, the sun was prickling like a hot rash on the back of my neck, and a piece of lava was wedged in my spine. My brother's face was swollen and burnished as a new penny". Another favorite passage of mine speaks of Manny's sister's friend. "She was in love with Nardo, but he didn't pay her any mind, mostly because blocks of fat sagged on her hips like a belt of thick Bibles". Descriptions like these don't appear out of thin air. It takes a skilled eye with a sense of humor to come up with such passages.

As I mentioned before, it would have been easy for Martinez to rest on his descriptive selections and pay little or no attention to character development and plot. Fortunately, this is not the case. While the plot is less a single tale of a boy becoming a man and more a series of significant vignettes in that boy's life, it still is a stunning piece of work. There are elements of painful realism in this tale, such as Manny's father attempting to shoot his mother in a drunken stupor and his mom defending that same husband to the police moments later. Characters act stupidly, nobly, or a little bit of both from time to time. The best way to determine how well you'll understand this story is to read the first chapter. If you finish it and don't feel that the author is monumentally gifted, you may as well move on and not bother with the rest of the book. Yet I'm confident when I say that people who don't recognize this book's beauty will be few and far between.

Great writing deserves a great audience. As it is, "Parrot in the Oven" is supposedly a teen novel. Don't let that discourage you (especially if you're a teen). The book is just as deeply satisfying and wonderfully written as any adult book out there today. After all, they say that if "Catcher in the Rye" was written today it would be published as a teen novel. If you're looking for a book that will wow you with its prose, this is the tale to purchase. A stunning and honest accomplishment.


Rating:
Summary: Review of Parrot in the Oven
Review: Parrot in the Oven was a good book to read. It was a growing up tale of a young Mexican boy going through many different situations. Manny the main charater in the book was talking about his life and the things he went through. Manny talks about his experiences through his childhood. It was a good read because it was a book that you could relate to. This book deals with some of the situations many Mexican kids go through in the United States. Manny talks about what he should be doing with his life and why he should do it. Manny is a young boy that dose not have too much confedence, but then starts to gain it up in the book. He understands what kind of person he should be in life, because he knows what other kind of person he could be and he dose not like it.

Rating:
Summary: Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida by Victor Martinez
Review: Parrot in the Oven was reviewed as a luminous, humorous journal of a Mexican-American teens. This novel is divided into eleven short chapters where Victor narrates stories. It is written in a form that can be read by a wide range of ages, but the story is truly genuine. Its emphasis is on the life of Manuel Hernandez and his family struggling with problems such as a racism, poverty, and violence. Fourteen-year-old Manuel, called "Manny", has an older brother, Bernardo, often referred to as "Nardo", an older sister, Magda, and a younger sister Pedi. The Hernandez family continuously avoids people such as the Garcia's family, who are almost always doing something no good. Manuel's father can't maintain a job, like his son Bernardo. His father spends the majority of his free time at Rico's Pool Hall drinking and getting angry just to return to his home, occasionally resulting in offensive actions and we can see this in chapter 2 "Rico's Pool Hal."
Manuel's mother tries so hard to preserve a clean, and socially adequate home, but her constant arguments with her husband, as well as Magda's behavior for lack of respect and dependability, manage to maintain her tension level high, and the contemplation of true joy unthinkable. Manuel wants to be valued, but what he in truth wants is to be loved, particularly by a girl like in chapter 9, " Dying of Love".
In chapter 10 "A Test of Courage" said, "Just thinking about telling a girl I liked her clamped the muscles on my chest and made my lungs pull hard to catch a breath." sooner or later, Manuel gave up the initiative that he would ever be "nice" to young girls and Manny decides to join a gang to see if he is permitted to kiss a girl. He kisses the girl, but later on Manuel realizes that he doesn't really need to belong to a gang to kiss a girl, he can do that whenever he is allowed.
From the beginning to the end of the novel, we get to know Nardo as Manny's strong older brother who knows how to have a good time, but he doesn't essentially knows how to keep a job. Manny and Nardo are evidently unlike, and Manny rarely points these out. At the end we can see in chapter 11 "Going Home" that Manuel realized that he had the whole time a real home. He sits in his house, watching his sisters sleep on the sofa and he knows, for the first time, that this is where he is supposed to be, at home not his house but his home with his family.

Rating:
Summary: Great story
Review: Parrot in the Oven: mi vida, which won the National Book Award, is Victor Martinez's first novel. Set in the 70s, it follows fourteen year old Manny Hernandez through a series of defining conflicts. In the tradition of the best tales, this beautifully written story gives not just an engrossing narrative but also metaphors a reader can use to make sense of his or her own experiences. At the end Manny can say, "I'd finally seen my own face and recognized myself; recognized who I really should be."
The novel begins with a series of unresolved vignettes that illustrate Manny's alienation from some traditional sources of comfort: work, neighborhood, school and family. He is a hard worker but feels inferior as he watches a field worker's hands: "His were wings in a blur of wonder; mine stirred a warm pot of honey." He wants to be un vato firme but is easily intimidated by neighborhood bullies. He is intelligent but holds no hope of attending a challenging school. Most tragic of all, his abusive father is not merely content to destroy the home Manny's mother labors for; he even tries to destroy her. Then as Manny works in his maternal grandmother's garden, he sees the cherry tree his grandfather planted long ago, grafting the branches of many other trees onto it and creating a center for the oasis that was his home. The memories of his grandmother fix the garden home as a beautiful ideal in the middle of a thriving neighborhood. After she dies, the story arches over another set of painful experiences; in these, however, Manny grows wiser. He is less passive. He will neither hurt the women of his family, nor be disloyal to friends in defeat, nor lose his dignity at work, nor be a destructive force in his neighborhood.
Manny's longing to be loved, to belong, to be worthy is finally satisfied when he rejects his father's idea that "people were like money" and that "we were pennies." He returns to the "room...my mother spent so much energy cleaning and keeping together, and [that] my father spent so much energy tearing apart," and sees the value in small community of the home. The arc from the disappearing garden of Manny's grandfather to his own "wondrous home," the "place [he] was meant to be" suggests the strength he can find in past and present. Martinez uses a sensitive touch to depict Manny's troubles, touching on issues of class, ethnicity, sex, and race in a principled, honest way that is still free of dogma. An adolescent reader will find his or her concerns validated in a novel that does not trivialize the place of early choices in one's destiny.