Isabel notes, “We all live and work separate. They don’t mix us.” According to Marta, why is this case? pages 95-99

In this photograph, a family gathers outside their "home" in California, a typical shack in a camp of Mexican and Mexican American migrant farm workers during the 1930s Great Depression. The walls and roofs of the shack are patched together from different materials. Migrant farm workers of all races lived in temporary camps like this as they moved from farm to farm to follow the seasonal work. Why do you think the author of this text included quotes around the word “home?”

As the Great Depression took a toll on California's economy during the 1930s, however, Mexicans and Mexican Americans became targets for discrimination and removal. White government officials claimed that Mexican immigrants made up the majority of the California unemployed. White trade unions claimed that Mexican immigrants were taking jobs that should go to white men. In reality, a new supply of white refugees desperate for jobs was flooding California from the Midwest, making up the majority of the unemployed.

At the same time that wages were dropping due to the new white refugee labor, established Mexican and Mexican American farm workers had become a threat by banding together, often with other non-whites, and organizing strikes to protest lowered wages and worsening living conditions. Agriculture in the United States was crippled due to the ongoing Dust Bowl drought in the Midwest, while California was relatively untouched - the farm owners had a chance to profit immensely from the supply of cheap labor, but not if the protests were successful.

How would strikes impact landowners?

List three ways the living conditions in migrant camps were inhumane!

Why is Marta hostile towards Esperanza?

Why were shanty towns sometimes called “Hoovervilles?”

What was the Okie migration?

Mama, with her arms hugging her chest, swayed back and forth at the window, never taking her eyes from the darkness. […] Every sound of the house seem magnified, the clock ticking, someone coughing, the clink of the teacup. (p. 21)

This description is used to

Papa had promised to meet her in the garden and he never disappointed her. She bent over to pick a red bloom, fully opened, and pricked her finger on a vicious thorn. Big pearls of blood pulsed from the tip of her thumb and she automatically thought, "bad luck." She quickly wrapped her hand in the corner of her apron and dismissed the premonition. Then she cautiously clipped the blown rose that had wounded her. Looking toward the horizon, she saw the last of the sun disappear behind the Sierra Madre. Darkness would settle quickly and a feeling of uneasiness and worry nagged at her. (p. 8)

This is an example of what literary device ?

“Between them ran a deep river. Esperanza

stood on one side and Miguel stood on the other and the river could never be crossed.” (p. 18) This literary device being used is a

“I am poor but I am rich. I have my children, I have a garden with roses, and I have my faith and the memories of those who have gone before me. What more is there?" How is this an example of juxtaposition ?

Who were the migrant workers ?

What does it mean when a worker goes on strike ?

When did mass irrigation & farming of the Central Valley and San Joaquin Valley begin?

“Full bellies and Spanish blood go hand in

hand.” (p. 79) What did Miguel mean when he said this? Choose All That Apply!

“This whole valley breathes and lives,”is an example of what literary device ?