This is a book report on the book Esperanza Rising written by Pam Muñoz Ryan, the book starts in Aguascalientes, Mexico but the protagonist and her family is forced move to California after an event in the story while the Great Depression of the 1930 is taking place, there are many characters in the story however most of them are minor characters. The protagonist of the story is Esperanza Ortega, she is 13-years old and she wanted to bring her grandma to California after fleeing to California herself. The protagonist also has Miguel, the son of Alfonso and Hortensia, who used to work for Esperanza’s family. Miguel believes living as a poor farmer in the United States in better because he thinks there’s an opportunity to The whole book is quite a long one, so here’s a summary or synopsis of the book, Esperanza starts out in Mexico living a happy life and with her father’s help is able to hear the Earth’s heartbeat, however after realising her father has been killed, both of the families tios want to do something however it isn’t friendly, Tio Luis and Tio March however, they want to Esperanza’s mother to marry Tio Luis and threatened to send Esperanza to a boarding school. However Esperanza’s mother declined the offer, soon after the house of Esperanza’s family is burnt down, Esperanza’s mother is given a last chance to accept the offer from both tios, she accepts, but lied, instead the family flees to the United States of America in order to escape Tio Luis and Tio Marco,
First of all, why did Esperanza Ortega move to America in the first place?Well, her Papa had died from bandites, so Tio Luis (Papa’s brother,) proposes to mama, and burns the house, so they are forced to move to America to escape him!Since Esperanza was an immigrant,
“Don´t be afraid to start over.”All immigrants need to know this. Being an immigrant can cause many challenges, you have to leave your old life behind and your memories. Esperanza Ortega in the book Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan was an immigrant from Mexico. She had a lot of challenges as an immigrant. Before she immigrated to America she was a wealthy young girl in Mexico with servants. A series of tragedies forced her and he mama to move to America. This leads her to not be able to anything that a servant would do. Learning how to do chores was one of her challenges. In addition, she had two other challenges they were Mama getting Valley Fever, and the Mexican immigrants facing discrimination.
To foreshadow events in books or to tell the meaning of a story, authors often use symbolism. Symbolism uses people, places, or things that have their own meaning, to express something different. The author of Esperanza Rising, Pam Muñoz Ryan, uses a certain fruit or vegetable to symbolize events of emotions that occur in the chapter. Three chapters in Esperanza Rising that represent an important part of the book are Los Higos, Las Cebollas, and Los Aquacates. In Esperanza Rising, figs, onions, and avocados symbolize a new beginning, the acceptance of starting anew, and the rewards followed after hardship.
My book report was on “Esperanza Rising” by Pam Muñoz Ryan. The genre of this book is Historical Fiction. The publisher is Scholastic. It has a total of 253 pages plus the author’s notes. Esperanza Rising was published in the year of 2000. Some unusual facts about this book was that it had some Spanish words in it but English after so you know what it means. This book is a Pure Belpre Award winning book. The Pure Belpre Award means excellent portrayal of Latino experience in children's literature. I chose this book to read because the author seemed familiar and the cover of the book really caught my attention including the title.
Esperanza is the protagonist of the story. She is very wealthy and gets everything she wants. She struggles through her father’s death and moving to California. Throughout the story she becomes very mature, determined, and a hard worker. She really shocked me because she was a very spoiled princess who became a very strong migrant worker. Ramona Ortega also known as Mama is Esperanza’s mother. They are always together and she helped Esperanza stay strong. Throughout the story she is very strong but becomes very ill and depressed. Miguel was Esperanza’s best friends when they were little kids. He is the child of two servants that work for the family. He wants to become a mechanic and is very determined to reach that goal. They still look after eachother, even though they aren’t very close due to their social status. In the end he is able to bring back Abuelita back from Mexico. Hortensia was a servant that took care of their family. She always looked after Esperanza and was almost like a second mother. She was a Zapotec Indian. She was Alfonso’s wife and the mother of Miguel. Alfonso was a field worker and a very close friend to Papa. He loved the land and took care of the rose garden. He is the main person who helped everyone get to California. Isabel is the daughter of Juan and Josefina. She is only 9 years old but can clean, do laundry, and change diapers. She was the one who taught Esperanza how to do housework. She becomes very close friends with Esperanza. Isabel is the only one who goes to school to learn to read, write, and speak
In Chapter 5 of the novel Esperanza Rising, Hortensia recounts a story from when Esperanza was five years old and MIguel was eight years old. Hortensia and Esperanza were the only ones in the house when Miguel ran in because he saw six bandits with riffles coming toward them. The three hid under Esperanza’s bed and pulled down the bed covers so that they couldn’t be seen. The bandits came into the house and stole the silver. Two of the men came into the room where they were hiding. Miguel had a big field mouse in his pocket that he was planning to tease Esperanza with. When a pin pricked Esperanza she moved and made a sound. Miguel pushed the mouse out from under the bed and it ran around the room startling the bandits. The bandits thought that the sound had come from the mouse and left. Papa said that Miguel was very smart and brave for protecting Esperanza and rewarded Miguel by taking them both on a special outing on a train.
Esperanza and her mother made the choice to leave Mexico and go to California to work and escape Tio Luis, which I believe to be a good decision. Before going, Esperanza was spoiled, rich, and quite full of herself, living in a high social class family, and in general thought of herself better than others. At first, she was against leaving everything she knew and loved, but in the end, found herself liking California. Esperanza made new friends, in particular, Isabel, who taught her many things, even though she was younger. She taught her how to appreciate what she had, and how to get a job done. She taught her how to deal with the fact that
The neighborhood is not exactly a pretty place as Esperanza describes it. She says, “here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful” (39). In the one year of Esperanza’s life that this book covers, she is raped, abused, and sees the death of the only person who would listen to her poetry- “Her name was Aunt Lupe and she was beautiful like [her] mother” (70). Her discontent with the neighborhood surrounding the house on Mango Street and the rough times that she experienced caused her to want to move away from
She was born in Chicago, Illinois. Cisneros grew up in a Latino family around the 1950s and 1960s. She had a Mexican father and Chicano mother. Cisneros was encouraged by her mother to read and was not insisted with spending all of her time performing classic “women’s work”. Cisneros welcomes her culture with open arms, but acknowledges the unjustness between the genders within. Having experience growing up in a poor neighborhood in a working class family while facing the difficulties created by racism, sexism, and her status, Esperanza longed to leave the barrio. Later, she finds her capability to succeed individually and find a “home with herself”; she worked to recreate some Chicano stereotypes for her community. Cisneros didn’t want to
The book Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, gives readers a reason to never be afraid of starting over. The main character named Esperanza, is faced with several challenging situations as a young girl. These challenging events are life changing at times, which forces her to make adult decisions at young age. The life Esperanza is forced to live is unfortunately a reality to many Mexican families that made the move to the United States in search of the American Dream. Events faced by Esperanza’s family alongside workers of the El Rancho de las Rosas, which Esperanza’s family owned, forces Esperanza to change into a mature young teenage female. Munoz Ryan shows Esperanza’s character change by challenges she is faced with. The outcome of these events show growth within her young life by the emotions Esperanza expresses. Throughout the book Munoz Ryan uses symbolism to show growth and change within all characters. However; it is obvious to see the symbolic aspects the author provides related to Esperanza’s changes. The author faces Esperanza with different events to help remind her of a once wealthy life along with her current immigrant life style. As a whole many factors influence Esperanza's change. In the onset of Esperanza Rising, Esperanza is a wealthy, spoiled and dependent eight year old child, due to life changing events, she matures into an independent and mature teenage female.
The main character of the book, Esperanza Rising, is a young girl named Esperanza. The story begins in Aguascalientes, Mexico on a beautiful ranch owned by Esperanza’s father. However, Esperanza and her family are forced to immigrate to America. Throughout the journey, Esperanza reveals several of her personality traits. All of these traits can be represented by symbols.
“Don’t be afraid to start over.” Immigrants everywhere have to move and start their whole life over. Esperanza Rising is a book about a rich Mexican girl that loses everything when her house burns down. This book was written by Pam Munoz Ryan, and her life was much like Esperanza’s when she had to move from Mexico and had to work for very low pay as an immigrant. Esperanza faced many challenges like Marta and her friends trying to get workers to go on a strike, mama getting sick with Valley Fever, and other Mexicans facing discrimination in the U.S.
Esperanza is a shy but a very bright girl. She dreams of the perfect home now, with beautiful flowers in their luscious garden and a room for everyone to live in comfortably all because of the unsatisfied face the nun made that one afternoon--when she moves to the house of Mango Street. She thinks it’s going to be a “grand house on a hill that will have a bedroom for everyone and at least three washrooms so when they took a bath they would not have to tell everybody.” (Cinceros 4) Reality is so different for her when her dream is shot down in a heartbeat when she
The first issue that many Latino author’s address is the problems in many Latin American countries. In Esperanza Rising Esperanza’s family faces the backlash of the Mexican revolution. Esperanza’s family has land in Mexico which makes them a target for many unhappy citizens in Mexico. Esperanza’s mother has to explain to her that, "the wealthy still own most of the land while some of the poor have not even a garden plot. There are cattle grazing on the big ranches, yet some peasants are forced to eat cats" (Ryan, 25). Eventually Esperanza’s father is murdered by bandit’s and they are forced to leave the dangerous country. Mexico is not the only place with major issues. Young Adult literature often reaches into the historical hardships of other Latin countries, such as the dictators of the Dominican Republican in Julia Alvarez’s novel Before We Were Free. Alvarez talks about the distrust of the police, stating “Back home, [her father] had been tailed by the secret police for months and the family had only narrowly escaped capture their last day on the Island” (Alvarez 233). Young Adult literature reflects this often as a background story, forcing the protagonists into the environment they are in. As well, it frames the families’ mindset and the hardships many have faced before
In The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros, a little girl from a Latino heritage is given birth to. Not literally, but in the sense of characterization. Esperanza is a fictional character made up by Cisneros to bring about sensitive, alert, and rich literature. She is the protagonist in the novel and is used to depict a female’s life growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Cisneros creates the illusion that Esperanza is a real human being to communicate the struggles of growing up as a Latina immigrant in a modern world, by giving her a name, elaborating her thoughts and feelings, and illustrating her growth as a person through major events.