Esperanza Rising

Aguascalientes, Mexico

• In 1924, Papa takes his 6-year-old daughter, Esperanza, into his vast vineyards to listen to the heartbeat of the land.

“He gently touched a wild tendril that reached into the row, as if it had been waiting to shake his hand.” (Papa tells Esperanza on page 1. An example of

personification.)

Las Uvas (Grapes)• Six years later, in 1930, Esperanza

still lives her pampered life on El Rancho de las Rosas with her parents, Sixto Ortega (Papa) and Ramona Ortega (Mama.)

• On the eve of Esperanza’s 13th birthday, Papa fails to come home from working with his vaqueros (cowboys).

• Esperanza, Mama, Esperanza’s abuelita (grandmother), and their servant (Hortensia), and her husband, Papa’s field boss Alfonso, all wait anxiously.

Las Uvas (Grapes) Esperanza tells Miguel that they stand on

opposite sides of a deep river.

Esperanza—the daughter of a wealthy ranch owner—stands on one side.

Miguel—the son of the poor housekeeper—stands on the other side.

The river is a symbol of the division between them.

Las Uvas (Grapes)

• Papa’s older stepbrothers, Tio Luis, a banker, and Tio Marco, the town mayor, join the waiting women.

• Finally, Alfonso and his son, Miguel, who is Esperanza’s childhood playmate, bring back Papa’s body in a wagon.

•“…they looked like two underfed billy goats.” (Esperanza describes her mean uncles using a simile, pg. 19)

Las Uvas (Grapes)

“No hay rosas sin espinas. There is no rose without thorns.” (Abuelita quotes a Mexican proverb, pg. 14)

Las Papayas: Papayas

Papaya tree

Las Papayas: Papaya• Esperanza opens her birthday

present from her dead Papa, a beautiful porcelain doll.

• Papa left his house and contents to Mama and Esperanza; Papa left the land to his brothers.

• Tio Luiz proposes marriage to Mama. She refuses.

• Miguel tells Esperanza that his family plans to leave for the U.S. for a better life.

Los Higos (Figs)

Los Higos (Figs)• A mysterious fire destroys

Esperanza’s house and the vineyard.

• Esperanza and her mother plan to escape to the U.S. with Miguel’s family. They plan to join Alfonso’s brother, Juan, and his family, who works on a farm in California.

• Abuelita stays behind because she was injured in the fire. She tells Esperanza to not be afraid to start over.

Los Higos (Figs)

• Abuelita tells Esperanza to look forward to being like the Phoenix, which comes from an ancient legend about a bird that burned to death but came back to life from the ashes.

Los Higos (Figs)Abuelita also gives Esperanza a blanket she was crocheting, which has a zig-zag pattern in it. The grandmothers tells her that the zig-zag represents mountains and valleys. It is a symbol for life’s ups and downs.

Las Guayabas (Guavas)

Las Guayabas (Guavas)• Esperanza, Mama and

Hortensia hide in a guava-loaded wagon driven by Alfonso and Miguel for two days heading north to the U.S. border.

• At the town called Zacatecas, they board a train filled with campesinos, or peasants.

• Esperanza has a hard time adjusting to her new status, ignoring when Mama says, “now we are peasants, too.”

Map of Esperanza’sjourney from

Aguascalientes,Mexico, to Arvin,

California,in the San Joaquin

Valley.

Los Melones (Cantaloupes)

Los Melones (Cantaloupes)• After four days on the train,

Esperanza and family arrive at a border town, Mexicali. A second train brings them to Los Angeles.

• Alfonso’s family meets them there, including his brother, Juan, wife, Josefina, 8-year-old daughter, Isabel, and year-old twins, Lupe and Pepe.

• They all ride in a bumpy truck to Arvin, a town in the San Joaquin Valley in central California.

Green area represents the San Joaquin Valley

Los Melones (Cantaloupes)

• At a rest stop in California, Esperanza tries to hear the heartbeat of the land, but hears nothing.

• Instead, she feels herself floating, drifting upward, frightened, then falling.

• During the truck ride, Juan picks up Marta, whose father fought in the Mexican Revolution. Marta is jealous of Esperanza.

• Marta argues that farm workers should strike for higher wages.

Los Melones (Cantaloupes)A huelga, or “strike,” is when workers group together and refuse

to work. They hope that their bosses—the owners of the company they work for--will suffer from their lack of help and agree to pay the workers more money and/or improve their

working conditions.

Los Melones (Cantaloupes)

Marta’s father fought and died in the Mexican Revolution in 1910, when the peasants battled to take

back land from the large ranch owners, such as Esperanza’s father.

Los Cebollas (Onions)

Las Cebollas (Onions)• At the farm workers’ camp, Esperanza shares a two-room cabin with her family and Juan’s family.

• The women work packing grapes in the sheds; the men pick grapes in the field.

• Esperanza stays home to watch the babies with Isabel, who can’t believe Esperanza doesn’t know how to sweep.

Las Almendras (Almonds)

Los Almendras (Almonds)

• Alfonso and Miguel surprise Esperanza by planting rose-bush cuttings from her Papa’s garden in Mexico behind their cabin.

• At Saturday nights’ jamaica camp party, Marta and her friends urge the workers to join a cotton workers’ strike.

• Many workers are afraid to strike, fearing they will lose their jobs to those willing to be paid less to work, such as the “Okies” from Oklahoma.

Las Ciruelas (Plums)

Las Ciruelas (Plums)• While Isabel attends school, Esperanza takes cares of babies and housework. • One day, a giant dust storm strikes. Esperanza seeks shelter in the cabin, but

workers are unprotected. The cotton crop is buried, and there is nothing to harvest.

• The dust gives Mama a lung disease, called Valley Fever, and she may not survive.

Las Papas (Potatoes)

Las Papas (Potatoes)• Esperanza cares for

her sick Mama, and works on the zig-zag blanket.

• Mama, who is also depressed, moves to the county hospital.

• Esperanza starts working with women in sheds to earn money to bring Abuelita to join them, which she thinks will cheer up Mama. She is now the family “patrona,” leader.

Los Aguacates (Avocados)

Los Aguacates (Avocados)

• Esperanza works in cold fields tying grapes to save money to send Abuelita to California.

• Esperanza now has the rough hands of a field worker, campesino.

• When Esperanza and Miguel give a ride to Marta and her mom to a squalid strikers’ camp, Esperanza feels sympathetic to the idea of going on strike.

• She believes she must keep working and not strike to earn money to help Mama.

Los Esparragos (Asparagus)

Los Esparragos (Asparagus)

• While Esperanza and other women pack the asparagus crop, strikers are disrupting the harvest.

• Immigration officials, la migra, send the protesting strikers (even those who are U.S. citizens) back to Mexico, which is called being “deported.”

• When Esperanza discovers Marta hiding from immigration officials, she doesn’t give her away.

• The next day, the strikers’ camp is empty. Mexicans being deported back to

Mexico in 1931.

Los Duraznos (Peaches)

Los Duraznos (Peaches)• Isabel wants to be chosen May Queen

of the third grade, but only blond and blue-eyed students get that honor. Esperanza gives Isabel her precious doll after Isabel does not get to be May Queen.

• Miguel loses his job in the machine shop to men from Oklahoma and has to dig ditches.

• Esperanza tells Miguel he is still a peasant on the other side of the river; Miguel calls Esperanza a queen.

• The next day, Miguel is gone, telling his father he is heading north to work for the railroad. Esperanza discovers the money she saved in her valise is gone.

Las Uvas (Grapes)• When the family arrives to the train

station to pick up Miguel in Bakersfield, California, after his travels, he surprises everyone by bringing back Abuelita.

• Miguel used Esperanza’s money to pay for the trip back to Mexico.

• Mama is happy, Esperanza finished the zig-zag blanket, and Esperanza hears the earth’s heartbeat now.

• Esperanza experiences the sense of rising and floating again, this time she is in control, hopeful for her future, ready to meet challenges, with Miguel holding her heart to the earth.

About the AuthorPam Munoz Ryan was born in

Bakersfield, California, and grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, the setting for Esperanza Rising. She was the oldest

of three sisters and the oldest of 23 cousins, most of whom lived nearby.

Ryan describes herself as “truly American” because her heritage is a mix of Mexican, Spanish, Basque,

Italian, and Oklahoman. The Dust Bowl impelled her Portuguese-speaking

Basque grandfather to migrate from Oklahoma to California. Her

grandparents, Esperanza and Jesus, came to the U.S. from Mexico in the

1930s, and this novel is based on that Esperanza’s experiences in farm labor

camps. (From Perma-Bound Classroom Favorites Teacher’s Guide.)