shgmclicious 's review for:

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan

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Everyone always talks about this book, and I assumed it would be your usual middle grade "diverse" historical fiction, which is to say something that panders to "non-diverse" readers. While I resent, even in a middle grade novel, the italicizing and insta-translating that goes on with the Spanish, and I find it especially illogical that everyone's names have accents where they belong except Mama and Papa, I did find this to be off the beaten track with immigration narratives, since it's more of a migrant one. There is a lot of interesting stuff barely touched upon as far as striking and scabbing when it comes to being in a precarious legal situation, and the repatriation thing was more or less new to me, and it's scary to think we may be heading that way again.