In “A Gringo in the Lettuce Fields,” author Gabriel Thompson presents a look into the life of a migrant worker in the lettuce fields in Yuma Arizona. First, Thompson gives a first look into the job by describing what the area of the fields look like. “I wake up staring into the bluest blue I’ve ever seen. ”(89) “To my left, in the distance, a border patrol helicopter is hovering.
In "A Partial Remmebrance of a Puerto Rican Childhood," Judith Ortiz Cofer explains what its like in her family of Puerto Rican Women. Cofer shares the traditions the women carry on in her family, such as, sharing stories and life events. Her story shows how involved the women are with one another and how important lessons throughout the generations are for them. Mama shares a story about a girl by the name of Maria La Loca. Mama says, she was once a beautiful girl and that on her wedding day she looked like a princess.
In “A Gringo in the Lettuce Fields,” Gabriel Thompson spends about two months cutting lettuce in the hot fields of Yuma alongside immigrants laborers. At first glimpse, the immigrants thought he was either crazy or an undercover immigration agent ready to deport them back to their home country. But within a few days just outside Watsonville, Thompson got to know some immigrants and sensed the backbreaking, harsh conditions work of these immigrant laborers. He would then get physically drained, and never became good enough to keep up with the machine that puts along with the rows of lettuce driving the pace of the crews. Thompson, in the end, shines a bright light on the underside of the economy, exposing injustices endured by low-paid laborers
He is very joyful for his sisters knowing that they are attending school. In school he knows that they will at least eat and have air condition. While in the other hand, there are days when migrant workers don’t even eat, much less have air conditioning. For him, he realized his parents were struggle and decided that he want to help them out as well which is why he goes to the fields to earn roughly around sixty dollars a day. In the same way Perla also has a difficult journey, but for Perla her journey beings in Weslaco, Texas.
The conditions were expressed very negative and unjust for they’d work for absolutely any wage. Men, women, boys, and girls, were put to work in harsh conditions that are treated as slaves doc 1. Living conditions are very alike to those depicted in doc 4 where immigrants were staying. They are very humble and they dress very cheaply and eat rice from China while sleeping 20 in a room treated very poorly. They used them to find success in business’s for they’d work continuously and would pay them whatever they wished.
In the generations of the immigrant labor of a Slovak family, the Dorejacks demonstrates the tough labor in America. In the novel “Out This Furnace” a captivating, non-fiction story, Thomas Bell suggests that immigrant labor in the early days was tough and factors like labor inequality, the relationship between companies and politics, and essential money shaped immigrants freedom. In the mid-1800’s George Kracha fled his country, Austria, under the ruler of Frank Josef, because of the lack of money and employment, Kracha couldn’t sustain his wife and mother (p.3). Moreover, Kracha’s story began when he arrived in New York to White Hill, he then migrates to several other cities but still in America.
When it comes to certain topics, multiple interpretations can be revealed, as an argument progresses. Sometimes it may be hard to tell which side is in the right. Subsequently, opinions continuously fly back and forth between individuals who can’t seem to stop disagreeing with each other. Moreover, internal conflicts occasionally arise as well, within each individual, due to new information that develops from their personal trials. Finding a piece of literature where the reader can relate to is a great fortune.
In the short story “ The Circuit” by Francisco Jimenez, the lifestyle of a migrant worker is portrayed as discouraging. Migrant workers have to move often. After a long day of picking strawberries, Panchito returns home to find that “Everything [he] owned was neatly packed in cardboard boxes.” he “suddenly felt even more the weight of hours, days, weeks, and months of work.” (1) Moving often is discouraging because everything that you have built at your current location is taken away.
As a result, from 1860 to 1900 alone, the number of urban areas in the United States expanded fivefold (Source 2). The immigrants who desperately needed employment and the greed of factory owners made the rise of sweat shops astonishing. Around the country low-paid immigrants, including women and children, worked for excessively long
Montejano argued that the mexican were shaped to be a minority group by the development of socially constructed racial difference between them and higher races in the United States, and depreciating them from job security in higher paying jobs, which is tied to Glenn’s argument of that Mexicans did not came to the United states as a Minority group. Montejano argument signifies how the mexican got from being different from one another in their society by social hierarchy to being all considered as minority in the United States despite their old social class. American were separated by hypothetical barriers from mexicans that made them believe that they were the dominate race over Mexican . For example, Mrs. millar, an american
Immigration is deeply rooted in the American culture, yet it is still an issue that has the country divided. Marcelo and Carola Suarez-Orozco, in their essay, “How Immigrants Became ‘Other’” explore the topic of immigration. They argue that Americans view many immigrants as criminals entering America with the hopes of stealing jobs and taking over, but that this viewpoint is not true. They claim that immigrants give up a lot to even have a chance to come into America and will take whatever they can get when they come. The Suarez-Orozco’s support their argument using authority figures to gain credibility as well as exemplification through immigrant stories.
In The Harvest Gypsies, Steinbeck also describes decreasing morale in the displaced farmers as he says “the dullness shows in the faces…and in addition there is a sullenness that makes them taciturn.” The difficulty of finding adequate work to support a family during the Dust Bowl was extremely high—and as the work was competitive, these farmers implicated the work ethic that began at the beginning of the 20th
Julio, on the other hand, lives in highly ethnically diverse Los Angeles as one of the immigrant children devoid of family ties. This immediate environment of family is what Bronfenbrenner calls the microsystem. Luis enjoyed a physical presence and handling of the eleven family members in their home. But for Julio, it was a negative experience when aspect of physical development as she just a mere immigrant without parents around to give her moral support. On a worldwide perspective, both Julio and Luis desire a better world beyond theirs.
As a young child, after being told of how poor her houseboy Fido was, Adichie did not believe his family could also be hardworking. “Their poverty was my single story of them. ”(Adichie) She also details how later, on a trip to Guadalajara she was overwhelmed with shame because her only image of Mexicans was the “abject immigrant” due to the “…endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.” (Adichie)a She was caught by surprise when she saw Mexicans happy and at work in the marketplace.
Immigrant lives in both Fruit of the Lemon and ‘reality’ hardships mostly share similar endurance. Many immigrants are stuck in two different cultures; their original culture and the new culture that they adopt in a new place. However, some immigrants only have a chance to adopt a new culture. Some immigrant family’s children were born in a country other than their native country. In Fruit of the Lemon, Faith is a person who lived her whole life without her native culture which was hard for her to understand her fellows race.