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Rating: 
Summary: A Review with a Claim
Review: -----Teachers all over America force their students to read many books to help them find self-identity in the awkward years before adulthood. Most students, for example, are forced to read Catcher in the Rye. This book recognizes issues that the white, urban, middle to upper class American youth goes through. Issues like sex, drugs, school, changes and overall life in the city. This book helps much of the youth, including myself, cope with growing up. It doesn't, however, cover the issue of segregation and poverty. These two topics are very common, and have a huge impact on much of the American youth. A book that does cover these topics, however, is one written by Tomas Rivera, entitled, And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Tomas Rivera creates fictional short stories, from an adolescent's perspective, about real life issues for Mexican-Americans in the early to middle twentieth century. Though the stories are fiction, Rivera articulates truths about the struggles with issues like work, family, religion, poverty and segregation. Rivera has created a book that could greatly serve as a coping tool for youths that struggle with such issues. It should therefore, be brought into American school systems in order to allow students to identify with it as they mature into adults.
-----One of the short stories that pretty much discuss each of the issues including work, family, religion, poverty and segregation is, in fact, the one the book's named after, "And the Earth Did Not Devour Him." It covers not only work related issues like low pay, long hours, hot weather, unreasonable bosses, and young children working, but also poverty, family and religion. This story is about a poor family where almost all members have to help out and work. They all work on a plantation where, during the peak of summer, the sun starts to get to them and they drop like flies due to sunstroke. A young boy is witnessing this and is constantly expressing how he feels. He starts to question God. He wonders why God would do this to his kind, hard working family. He curses God and finally after doing so feels at peace. This story is one of the most powerful stories in the book. It is well written, covering many issues in only a matter of pages. Many children grow up and see their family work so hard without much to show for it. Because of this, many children blame God or question their religion. There is no answer to such frustration but this story can help be a tool to help cope with it. This is just one out of the many stories in this book that is meaningful in some aspect. Each represents a memory in a young boy's life that was important to him, in a good or bad way. Rivera effectively uses the child's memory as a way to jump from story to story. By doing this, the book doesn't get boring and he tackles many different issues.
-----This book definitely takes the role as a deconstruction literary style in the aspect that the stories can be taken more than one way. Readers could use them to cope, as a lesson, or just for entertainment. I, personally, found this book to be very moving, informative and entertaining. I became aware of how fortunate I am not to have to deal with such issues. With the deconstruction literary style in mind, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone of any age, especially a youth that has suffered from work, family, religion, poverty or segregation. Teachers should defiantly bring this book into their curriculum where it can be used to help cope with growing up or to learn about some of the struggles that many oppressed Americans, mostly Mexican Americans, went through and/or still go through.
Rating:
Summary: A Review with a Claim
Review: -----Teachers all over America force their students to read many books to help them find self-identity in the awkward years before adulthood. Most students, for example, are forced to read Catcher in the Rye. This book recognizes issues that the white, urban, middle to upper class American youth goes through. Issues like sex, drugs, school, changes and overall life in the city. This book helps much of the youth, including myself, cope with growing up. It doesn't, however, cover the issue of segregation and poverty. These two topics are very common, and have a huge impact on much of the American youth. A book that does cover these topics, however, is one written by Tomas Rivera, entitled, And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Tomas Rivera creates fictional short stories, from an adolescent's perspective, about real life issues for Mexican-Americans in the early to middle twentieth century. Though the stories are fiction, Rivera articulates truths about the struggles with issues like work, family, religion, poverty and segregation. Rivera has created a book that could greatly serve as a coping tool for youths that struggle with such issues. It should therefore, be brought into American school systems in order to allow students to identify with it as they mature into adults.
-----One of the short stories that pretty much discuss each of the issues including work, family, religion, poverty and segregation is, in fact, the one the book's named after, "And the Earth Did Not Devour Him." It covers not only work related issues like low pay, long hours, hot weather, unreasonable bosses, and young children working, but also poverty, family and religion. This story is about a poor family where almost all members have to help out and work. They all work on a plantation where, during the peak of summer, the sun starts to get to them and they drop like flies due to sunstroke. A young boy is witnessing this and is constantly expressing how he feels. He starts to question God. He wonders why God would do this to his kind, hard working family. He curses God and finally after doing so feels at peace. This story is one of the most powerful stories in the book. It is well written, covering many issues in only a matter of pages. Many children grow up and see their family work so hard without much to show for it. Because of this, many children blame God or question their religion. There is no answer to such frustration but this story can help be a tool to help cope with it. This is just one out of the many stories in this book that is meaningful in some aspect. Each represents a memory in a young boy's life that was important to him, in a good or bad way. Rivera effectively uses the child's memory as a way to jump from story to story. By doing this, the book doesn't get boring and he tackles many different issues.
-----This book definitely takes the role as a deconstruction literary style in the aspect that the stories can be taken more than one way. Readers could use them to cope, as a lesson, or just for entertainment. I, personally, found this book to be very moving, informative and entertaining. I became aware of how fortunate I am not to have to deal with such issues. With the deconstruction literary style in mind, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone of any age, especially a youth that has suffered from work, family, religion, poverty or segregation. Teachers should defiantly bring this book into their curriculum where it can be used to help cope with growing up or to learn about some of the struggles that many oppressed Americans, mostly Mexican Americans, went through and/or still go through.
Rating:
Summary: Good Work, Sloppy Translation
Review: I refer to the Arte Publico Press edition, translation by Evangelina-Vigil-Pinon. Rivera's sensitive, poignant and lyrical work really ought to have been copy-edited, if the translator speaks such poor English. It does no minority author any service to have his or her book filled with ignorant grammar mistakes--especially when those mistakes are not in the original Spanish.I hope, if another edition is prepared, someone will purchase a third grade grammar and correct such embarrassing errors as the use of lay when the verb is lie, possessives, and plurals.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: It's a little on the politically correct side, but it's a good read about a Mexican-American family's struggle to survive working in produce fields and the humiliation the main character faces in school and in life being a Mexican-American.
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