Review written for ClubReading.com by Tony
Elva Trevino Hart is the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents who lived in south Texas and worked seasonally, with their children, on farms in Minnesota and Wisconsin. This quietly passionate book is at once the recounting of rich childhhod memories, and a recognition and celebration of a heritage that had been suppressed by this talented woman in order to rise through our corporate culture. A beautiful book which will move the reader with its vivid images of childhood, and also make her question, yet again, the inequities of our society.
EXCERPT FROM Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child:
I am nobody. And my story is the same as a million others. Poor Mexican American. Female child. We all look alike: dirty feet, brown skin, downcast eyes.
You have seen us if you have driven through south Texas on the way to Mexico. We are there-walking barefoot by the side of the road. During harvest time there are fewer of us-we are with our families in the fields.
Some of us grow up and move to cities. We work downtown and speak perfect English. Others of us stay. I don’t know which is better.
Sometimes we move to places where people don’t know that underneath the wool crepe suit is a brown, barefoot little girl like me. Behind the university-speak is a whole magic world in Spanish. We play the game well and it looks as if we are happy. Sure, we’re happy.
But then, when we’re flipping through radio stations on the way to the office, we get to the Mexican station, and they’re playing our favorite torrido. It makes us long for mamacita, for tortillas, for the comadres and the tias, for dancing rancheras in the hot, sweaty night under the stars at the fiesta.
Then the nine-to-five life seems dry as a stone and without a soul.
“How did I get here?” we ask.
I’ll tell you.