Annotated Bibliography

My department works very hard to compile a varied selection of course readings—diverse in both subject matter and reading level.  One of the objectives for my 10^th grade American literature course will be to think critically about the way that American literature has expanded and now includes voices that may not have been considered American in years past.  Therefore, I am developing a unit called “Rethinking Borders” in which students will read various short fiction and poetry from writers who have immigrated to the United States.  The texts I have selected will serve as focal points to help students (I hope) call into question the portrayal of undocumented workers and their families and provide the human experience side to these stories that is rarely seen through news media outlets.

Students from all levels can benefit from these texts in several ways.  While readability estimates suggest that each of these books is written below the 10^th grade level, two out of the three would require instructional support because of the content—not the language.  Each book is written in a different style: semi-autobiographical, first person narrated fiction (Jimenez), creative nonfiction (Urrea), and a journalistic, news magazine style (Martinez).  These different writing approaches all develop the different points of view on the narrative of undocumented border crossers.  The two websites offered present several photographs that will engage students at the visual level.  With the varied reading levels, students will be able to read material on their own and with my instructional support.  This way, all students can have something to offer to discussions and will never feel that they could not understand any of the texts assigned for class.

Jimenez, Francisco. (1997). The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Readability Estimate: 5.0. This collection of semi-autobiographical stories is told from the perspective of Francisco—a young boy who narrates the life of a migrant working family as it travels along the California farm circuit.  Through Francisco’s voice, we get a glimpse of the hope and dedication that drives migrant families to move constantly from place to place—living a life devoid of any permanence other than what one gets from being a member of a large but close-knit family.   Because these stories can stand alone, I would most likely select a few of them for students to read, so that students get a wider scope of the experience.  The stories are simple to read, brief, and focused, so I would make a point to select a combination of stories that discuss various aspects of the migrant worker experience: the educational/language acquisition experience, the daily life and labor experience, and the nervousness surrounding the possibility of being discovered by Border Patrol officers.

In teaching these stories, I would instruct students to track the instances and feelings that are unique to the narrator’s experience and those that are universal coming-of-age experiences.  I would guide students through one story, discussing specific events in the story and having the students discuss what categories they believe the events fall in to.  Ultimately, students would have to use the events as textual support in order to compose an argument that clearly presents their decisions regarding what are universal experiences and what are unique.  This type of assignment will require students to think critically about what they can take from reading about experiences that might appear to be entirely different from their own.

Urrea, Luis Alberto. (2004). The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York, NY: Back Bay Books.

Readability Estimate: 5.8.  In this book, Urrea has gone to great lengths to investigate the hopes and motivations of the men who became known as the Wellton 26—a group of undocumented workers who hoped to be led into the United States for work, but were instead abandoned in the desert by their guide.  Urrea tells a balanced story in which he vilifies no one and exalts no one.  The biggest villain in this book is the unforgiving and indiscriminate desert heat, and even still, the heat is described with an unbiased honesty.  The strength of this book is that after the first 10-15 pages, it is easy to forget that there are any questions surrounding the legality of crossing the United States/Mexico border—that even though we know from the beginning that only twelve of the 26 men survived the journey—we still keep reading through this fatal journey.

Even though this book has an estimated readability of  about 6^th grade, it is a study in tone and subtle rhetoric, and that’s the approach I would take with teaching this book.  While Urrea does not present overtly negative views of the coyote who abandoned the men, the Border Patrol agents, or the Wellton 26 themselves, his tone reveals a lot about what he hopes we can take away from reading this book.  Because the book avoids overt judgments, it is a great text to use to encourage students to think about the journeys that many of these hopeful travellers take in search of opportunity.  Once again, I would encourage students to write their way through their thinking by using reading notes and journaling that both responds to the texts and poses new questions.

Marentes, Carlos and Marentes, Cynthia. (1999). Los Braceros. Retrieved from http://www.farmworkers.org/benglish.html

            This website addresses specific details about los braceros and a bit of history about the origins and extent of this guest worker program.  Many students are unaware of this program that invited Mexican farmworkers into the United States to compensate for the manual labor shortage as a result of World War II.  While the images on this site are not extensive, the historical information is clearly presented and easy to understand.  Most interesting here is the section on “The Short Handle Hoe,” a tool that dehumanized laborers by forcing them to remain in a stooped position with their heads facing the ground.  This tool was eventually made illegal.  A major reason for using these materials is the focus on inciting critical thinking.  A great place to start the students thinking is with the term “bracero” (strong arm) and how it compares to the terms we hear now, i.e “illegal” and “alien”.

Martinez, Ruben. (2002). Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail. New York, NY: Picador.

Readability Estimate: 9. Like Urrea, Martinez’s book seeks to tell an honest story of a family’s travels out of Mexico and through several states in search of work and opportunity.  The narrative follows the Chavez family and the obstacles they encounter along the way.  Rather than present a story about how migrants might become invisible people who have simply “melted” into the United States melting pot, Martinez makes a point to argue that the Chavezes and families like them are actually developing a border culture that changes the cultural landscapes of both the United States and Mexico.

This book is very long, so I would not assign this entire book for student reading.  I would select excerpts that pair nicely with the Urrea and Jimenez books.  Also, the readability estimate suggests that this book is on a 9^th grade level; however, some selections use language that is not appropriate for a high school setting which further requires me to use excerpts.  Upon further searching, I see that this book is most often used in higher education courses because there are some sections that are written in more complex structure and language.  I would provide a selection for students to cite from for the major unit writing assignment.  Before writing their papers, I would guide students through the excerpt to ensure vocabulary understanding and to teach them how to outline main ideas in a text that, at times, has a more complicated structure.

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. (n.d.) America on the Move. Retrieved from http://americanhistory.si.edu/onthemove/themes/story_51_5.html

This website is a great complement to this unit, as the primary focus is on the images that present an honest and accurate depiction of the bracero experience.    Because so many of our students are visual people, viewing images that correspond to their readings helps them develop an accurate mental picture of working and living conditions of migrant workers.  Once students have a visual image that informs their reading, they can develop more informed arguments and responses to what we read and discuss.

Historicizing the Border: Learning More about Border Culture

In order to supplement my unit on migrations and immigrations--specifically our reading of Urrea's THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY and Francisco Jimenez's THE CIRCUIT--I have searched for several websites that would provide historical context for my students.  Most of my students think of Mexican immigration as a singularly contemporary issue without having any historical knowledge of the US/Mexico border relationship.  To fully grasp the gravity of what we read in Urrea's and Jimenez's books my students have to have some background regarding the state of border relations and crossings.


This website offers some details about various aspects of los braceros and the bracero program which invited thousands of Mexican farmworkers into the United States to work on farms in the Southwest.  My guess is that most of my students will be surprised to learn that there was a span of time during which it was convenient for the US to invite Mexican laborers into the country--that Mexican and Central American people did not all of a sudden decide to become criminals and illegally cross the border.  

For example, I would ask my students what they think about these types of signs? Is it a warning for citizens? Who is being cautioned? How is the intended audience supposed to exercise that caution?  How does this kind of signage effect the representation of undocumented border crossers?

Along with increased understanding of the migrant worker system, I would also like to engage the students in a critical discussion of the terms used to discuss this issue: border, illegal, alien to name a few.  I am including this "Borders and Identity" site as a supplement from which I would pull excerpts to pose critical thinking questions about the terminology in place.


Finally, I believe that one of the most important ways to engage our students is through the use of visual images.  This Smithsonian sponsored site has several images of the living and working conditions of braceros and their families.  Clicking on these images sends the student to a Smithsonian Institute website that offers more in-depth information about that particular image.

Get to know THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY by Luis Alberto Urrea

In my future English 10 class, I would like to construct a unit that explores the themes of (im)migration in the Americas, and when searching for books, I came across Luis Alberto Urrea's THE DEVIL'S HIGHWAY on the YALSA website.  I started this book and could not put it down. The journalistic writing with it's piercing language tells the story of the Wellton 26--the name used to refer to the  group of men on an ill-fated attempt to cross the Mexican border into Arizona in May 2001.  Urrea presents a story that puts a human face on the struggles of the undocumented as they attempt to survive the deadly terrain and conditions of the southwestern deserts--all the while describing the landscape with such precision that a reader feels everything from the angry heat of the desert sun to the unmet and oppressive need for water.  This book is not just mentioning illegals who die in the desert.  This book is reminding us all that there are human stories at the border, and regardless of our position on the undocumented immigrant debate, we cannot afford to forget that these undocumented migrants are human beings--not political campaign talking points, victims, criminals.  Simply human beings who die and risk death because of hope.

The websites I have here would supplement our study of this very important book. This site from University of California, Davis offers an excellent interactive map that I would send my students to in order to gain further insight about the setting of this book.  The map is marked to correspond with the significant locations along the journey of the Wellton 26.  Students can move along the various points on the map which are annotated with quotations from the book. This way, they can get a much better sense of dangerous journey these men undertook in search of hope and opportunity.

This is a video from University of Washington in which Urrea is giving a talk about his experiences--both familial and professional--and the book itself.  The video is a bit long, so while I would encourage students to watch the whole thing, I would most likely pinpoint certain places in the video for them to play closer attention to.  It might be effective to show those parts of the video in class, pausing at certain places to pose discussion questions (I would give them time to write their answers first) that the students would then connect to the reading.

Inquiry Post #3

QUESTION: Is there a place for young adult fiction--particularly the dystopian subgenre--in the secondary English classroom?

I have to start by saying this is a tough question to begin answering.  Deciding what texts to teach has always been a painstaking process for me, and I am assuming that this is the case for most new teachers.  As teachers, we do not want to impose our own views of what is considered worthwhile to study and what is not; however, many of my students find it extremely difficult to find any enjoyment in reading "the classics" or other examples of what I will call "literary literature"--texts that have achieved enough of a canonical status that they are deemed appropriate for academic study. However, when I look at the books my students are reading and sharing with one another, none of these books are classics or elevated canonical texts. They are reading, rereading, and sharing books that offer teens making their way through post-apocalyptic worlds, fighting, surviving, and (possibly) getting/keeping a girl or boyfriend along the way.  Is there any reason why these books do not have a prevalent role in secondary classrooms? Can we not still teach the literary concepts and writing skills our students need to succeed using books that students across reading levels and backgrounds seem to enjoy on a regular basis?


My short answer is yes, we can do all of these things and more with the books that already have a grip on our students' interest. If teachers have the freedom to select grade-appropriate texts without having to adhere to any particular list of texts, then we should do our best to incorporate texts that reflect our students' interests. While literary and academic scholars might be hesitant to include young adult dystopian fiction in any literary canon, we should not forget that including the kinds of stories that students are already talking about on their own offers us countless ways to extend the curriculum and engage all of the readers in different ways. The desolate worlds of dystopian fiction and the teenagers who live in them--struggling to maintain a sense of individuality in a world they did not create--spark new questions that would add a new level of excitement to a content area that students tend to be less excited about.  English, like any other discipline, has to keep up and remain relevant and current for our students. I am not suggesting that we should no longer teach any part of the canon; however, I am advocating for the inclusion of texts that our students are already finding interesting and thought-provoking. It would be very interesting to hear my students' critical thoughts on popular young adult literature--especially a genre that often magnifies the types of conflicts and emotions they have regarding their transition into adult societies they often feel they have no part in creating or controlling.


Works Consulted
Stallworth, B. Joyce. "The Relevance of Young Adult Literature". Educational Leadership. (April 2006): 59-63.