May Book Review
"Esperanza Rising", by Pam Muñoz Ryan.
Esperanza Ortega is the only child of a prominent wealthy Mexican rancher who must flee to California with her mother when her father is murdered by bandits after the Mexican Revolution.
Her pampered ways rapidly change as she adjusts to laboring for others as a field worker under harsh conditions of squalor on a company-owned farm labor camp. Esperanza learns how to take care of herself while forging a new life in a culture and country so foreign from the privileged world she was raised in.
The story takes place during the 1930s amidst class unrest in post-revolutionary Mexico and Southern California farm worker labor strikes during the Depression era. The life of the author’s own grandmother, her beloved Abuelita, was the inspiration for writing this rich work of historical fiction.
The Lee Library has both the book and the audio CD version of Esperanza Rising in the j/Ya collection.
Rosemarie Borsody, Public Services Librarian.
There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.