Sometimes I worry about what I am teaching my students when we read Latino literature. Here’s my biggest gripe: In order for these novels to properly reflect the lives of our students of color, why do the male characters always have to be violent drunks who cheat on their wives?
It seems like every Latino novel I teach has a female protagonist named Esperanza (seriously, it’s always Esperanza), who must overcome rampant male dominance in her Latino community, overcome poverty and racism—all while representing the hope for our young women that her symbolic name carries. The girls love it, as well they should. But the boys who need to become men? Not so much.
Our boys are reading about girls, and the few male characters we meet along our journey are drunken maniacs and cheats.
Don’t believe me? Read these books: “The House on Mango Street,” “Like Water for Chocolate,” “Parrot in the Oven” and “Rain of Gold.”
…“The House on Mango Street” doesn’t have a single male character who has any redeemable qualities. The father in “Parrot in the Oven” is an unemployed drunk who spends the family’s welfare money on beer and tries to shoot the mother with his unregistered rifle…
Of course, part of the problem lies in what makes a good story. You can’t write a novel about people who are happy and well adjusted…
I just get tired of being told that in order to reach our Latino males, we should teach them “Always Running,” which shows the childhood of a former gang member. What I’m trying to say is there are probably 30 books out there about teens who are gang members … Of course the lesson is always the same: “I was a gang member and then discovered the error of my ways.”
Unfortunately, our boys only see the first part—and it allows them to say, “So I’m in a gang; eventually I’ll learn my lesson, but for right now I’m going to bang.”
…Right now I am teaching “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which is about a well-adjusted little white girl with a father who is a moral powerhouse—but this book is good and the kids love it! What I really want to do is teach my Puente class a book like that, starring Mexicans.
Maybe you can help me—anyone out there have some books for our Latino boys that show them how to be a man without being a gang member first? Where is the Mexican Atticus Finch?