First they picked strawberries in the fields. Later the jobs got better: cleaning offices, washing windows and walls, waxing floors. Yet he celebrates his Mexican roots even as he learns to be an American. The images are powerful, especially the one of the boy cleaning offices before dawn, with notes of English words to memorize in his shirt pocket. Beginning just where The Circuit ended, the memoir finds Francisco and his family obtaining visas that will finally allow them to enter and stay in the United States without fear of deportation.
The eventual return of the rest of the family is a happy event, but it also raises tensions as Francisco and Roberto begin to live and dream outside the boundaries determined by their loving but demanding father, himself increasingly bitter as decades of farm work take their toll.
For all its recounting of deprivation, this is a hopeful book, told with rectitude and dignity. By the standards of contemporary YA realism, Francisco and his story are remarkably well behaved, but one never senses over-neatening by the author; rather, his truth to his teenaged self demonstrates a respect that embraces the reader as well. It is all about family, work, faith , caring, love, honesty and that elusive word Mexicans use that says it all: respetoβ¦.
The story is told through the eyes of a child turning adolescent. The family worked in various locations throughout California but eventually settled in Santa Maria, Calif. There is nothing particularly exceptional about any of this. What makes the difference is the honesty with which Francisco tells the story from the perspective of a child who is about eight years old when the story starts and 18 when it endsβ¦.
Francisco is careful to show how loving parents and teachers like Mr. Lema or counselors like Mr. All of this he does with humor and good taste. I delighted in the sweet pathos of his boyhood experiences and gradual awakening to girls, politics and the joys of reading.
