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3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
It's books like these that I can sit and wonder why teachers think teenagers are full of angst when they give us this to read.
What motivated me to pick this one up was that it was set where I grew up. It captured the feeling of that area very well.
alright let’s get into this SO THIS BOOK WAS A ROLLERCOASTER i keep surprising myself when i find books that i have to read for school actually enjoyable and i am still surprised here
this book covers a lot of serious topics and themes with illegal immigration, racism (specifically against hispanics), the american dream, anger and bigotry, nature and symbols within nature. there’s just so much to unpack so it definitely felt like reading a school book because of that, but also because of that ending BC WHAT i just kinda sat there for a couple minutes because to be honest i didn’t really know what happened but after time thinking about it i came to somewhat of a conclusion for the ending of this book and the whole message of it.
while i found myself sympathizing with cándido and américa basically thoughout the entire novel, and sometimes siding with delaney. i think this book was meant to give you an overall overview of the consequences of illegal immigration and a look into what it means for the two groups (the actual immigrants and then the people who are supposedly supposed to be affected by them coming here). cándido’s whole entire experience in the us has been bad luck quite literally until the very last page, yet despite all of that the book ends with him saving delaney. delaney’s character development goes in the opposite direction, he starts off as this liberal nature writer who seems set on his beliefs and has many instances where he questions his morals and realizes his racism. but as he gets more consumed into this white supremacist, capitalist, bigoted neighborhood he seems to fall into the same categories of the same men he called out in the beginning as he goes on an entire venture to threaten one mexican man. the book ends just as cándido reaches down to save delaney from this flash flood/mudslide that really topped off cándido’s entire bad luck trope and despite being really surprised and confused while reading that, i think it was the best way to end off this book.
it’s up to the reader’s interpretation to decide what should, or would happen after this. what would happen to cándido and américa as they just lost everything including their new born. what would delaney do with this new information about the mexican he saw as a threat. i mean throughout the entire book i was expecting delaney and kyra to have a change of heart and work towards not having a racist mindset but the complete opposite happens and i even predict that despite everything. sometimes there just isn’t a happy ending.
this book covers a lot of serious topics and themes with illegal immigration, racism (specifically against hispanics), the american dream, anger and bigotry, nature and symbols within nature. there’s just so much to unpack so it definitely felt like reading a school book because of that, but also because of that ending BC WHAT i just kinda sat there for a couple minutes because to be honest i didn’t really know what happened but after time thinking about it i came to somewhat of a conclusion for the ending of this book and the whole message of it.
while i found myself sympathizing with cándido and américa basically thoughout the entire novel, and sometimes siding with delaney. i think this book was meant to give you an overall overview of the consequences of illegal immigration and a look into what it means for the two groups (the actual immigrants and then the people who are supposedly supposed to be affected by them coming here). cándido’s whole entire experience in the us has been bad luck quite literally until the very last page, yet despite all of that the book ends with him saving delaney. delaney’s character development goes in the opposite direction, he starts off as this liberal nature writer who seems set on his beliefs and has many instances where he questions his morals and realizes his racism. but as he gets more consumed into this white supremacist, capitalist, bigoted neighborhood he seems to fall into the same categories of the same men he called out in the beginning as he goes on an entire venture to threaten one mexican man. the book ends just as cándido reaches down to save delaney from this flash flood/mudslide that really topped off cándido’s entire bad luck trope and despite being really surprised and confused while reading that, i think it was the best way to end off this book.
it’s up to the reader’s interpretation to decide what should, or would happen after this. what would happen to cándido and américa as they just lost everything including their new born. what would delaney do with this new information about the mexican he saw as a threat. i mean throughout the entire book i was expecting delaney and kyra to have a change of heart and work towards not having a racist mindset but the complete opposite happens and i even predict that despite everything. sometimes there just isn’t a happy ending.
T.C. Boyle writes the story of two couples living within a few miles of each other--one couple is illegal Mexicans "camping out" in the canyon, the other an anglo couple living in a southern California subdivision that becomes gated and walled during the story mirroring the anglo husband's conversion from tolerant liberal to lunatic racist as the Mexicans go from a distant idea to very real people living practically in his back yard.
I enjoyed the story and it covers many issues of illegal immigration, but I did think that the Mexican Candido's bad luck was a little melodramatic in places.
I enjoyed the story and it covers many issues of illegal immigration, but I did think that the Mexican Candido's bad luck was a little melodramatic in places.
Read this for a sociology class in college and I still remember how eye-opening and depressing it was, so that's something I guess?
Got to page 187 and had to bail. The characters were just toooooooo two-dimensional. No depth. Predictable. No internal struggle. It just made me tired.
Tortilla Curtain is a very topical story of a Mexican couple and an American couple. Candido and America survive several horrendous events in order to beg for work every day and live in a hovel in the woods behind a rich neighborhood in a canyon outside of Los Angeles. Delaney and Kyra live in that neighborhood with their son and are key personalities in the neighborhoods conflict to raise a wall around their homes to keep poverty and crime out. T. C. Boyle has some interesting points to make on both sides of his argument, or maybe he blatantly sides with the immigrants...
This is a timely subject with this being so hotly debated this election but an overly simplified look with one dimensional characters won't shed much light on real solutions.
This book is a little torture porn and a little Stephen King's Roadwork. I did not like Roadwork, but I do like this. From a technical standpoint this is a well written book. Yes, I will give that it is an oversimplifciation of attitudes of immigration but I think that Boyle does that purposely to lampoon the thoughts and motives of the well-to-do liberal (and not-so-liberal) white Californians. I think that is the point.
On the other side of the coin where we take shelter with our Mexican protagonists: it is unrelenting torture in the form of exceedingly bad luck. There is no break for them. From the beginning of the novel to the end: they're spinning their wheels to simply live.
Is this book presenting a solution? I don't think it needs to and I definitely wouldn't want it to. The one takeaway is: we're all people just trying to live.
On the other side of the coin where we take shelter with our Mexican protagonists: it is unrelenting torture in the form of exceedingly bad luck. There is no break for them. From the beginning of the novel to the end: they're spinning their wheels to simply live.
Is this book presenting a solution? I don't think it needs to and I definitely wouldn't want it to. The one takeaway is: we're all people just trying to live.