Esperanza Rising

In an ongoing effort to promote books by Latinos, the Association of American Publishers has designated May as Latino Book Month. During May they hope booksellers, librarians, and teachers will encourage people in their communities to read Latino books in both English and Spanish. Later in the month we’ll look at a book by Francisco Jiménez. Today I’d like to focus on a book by a Latino writer that seems guaranteed to achieve classic status, Pam Muñoz Ryan’s Esperanza Rising.

Like many authors hunting for inspiration, Muñoz Ryan pulled from the stories told in her family, particularly those of her Abuelita (grandmother), Esperanza Ortega. Even late in her life, when Esperanza talked about first coming to the United States from Mexico as a teenager she would cry. Pam began to fashion a protagonist based on her grandmother, weaving in other family experiences and some of her own as well.

Right before her thirteenth birthday, Esperanza faces a terrible tragedy—the death of her beloved father. Suddenly she and her mother find their fortunes reversed. Once wealthy land owners in Mexico, they must now rely on former servants to help them to immigrate to the United States and find work in a migrant camp in California. At first Esperanza can barely tolerate the cramped conditions and lack of autonomy. She naturally misses the feasts, the dresses, the accoutrements of being a privileged young girl. But because she loves her mother, she begins performing manual labor even though she has to be taught how to hold a broom. Eventually, when her mother grows ill and must stay in a hospital, Esperanza does backbreaking work in the fields, in hopes of saving enough money to bring her grandmother to America.

For a novel to be truly satisfying, the character needs to change in a believable way over the course of the narrative. Esperanza becomes a different human being—a kinder, more appreciative, more caring individual. Rather than hoarding her own few possessions, she gives away a beloved doll to help another little girl in pain. In 1930, when Mexicans went on strike for better wages but often get deported for doing so, Esperanza learns to look beyond the politics of the time to the human issues—everyone is simply trying to feed their family. Just like the person on whom her character was based, Esperanza finds someone to love, a former servant of her father’s.

As Pam Muñoz Ryan states in a superb author’s note, Esperanza means “hope” in Spanish. The hopes of immigrants to this country, their dreams, and their triumphs have never been as clearly captured as in this book. It is small wonder that Esperanza Rising has moved into the curriculum for fourth through ninth grade. It reminds all its readers that human beings can live with dignity, no matter the conditions, as long as family and community remain intact.

Few who read this powerful book forget it. The final line gives me inspiration every day, “Do not ever be afraid to start over.”

Here’s a passage from Esperanza Rising: