Customer Reviews

The Children of Sanchez

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

This book certainly lacks scientific data and all the other scholarly details usually found in an anthropological study. But there's nothing scientific about poverty. Footnotes and graphs have no place in this kind of examination. It's an emotional book, intimately conveying the scorn and contempt of family that's half-starved and forced to live in claustrophobic conditions.

"The Children of Sanchez" documents all the petty hostilities within the fragile family unit. And it documents them accurately. Living in Mexico City is hard. Rich or poor, chilangos are constantly forced to deal with incredible violence and instability; the city is unforgiving and cruel, with terrible pollution levels and wild corruption. Lewis has perfectly captured the daily horrors of this urbanized mess. Using the Sanchez family as a case group representative of many families in the capital, he shows how people are slowly crushed by their relatives, the justice system and the congestion.

Nothing in this book is false or misleading. I have lived and worked in Mexico City; I have lived with a middle-class Mexican family; and I have started a family in Mexico. The experiences of the Sanchez family mirror my own experiences. I have met and have known many people like the people in this book. I have seen my own family spend countless hours attacking each other. And I have seen people desperately trying to make ends meet in a city with no opportunities.

Read this book. It's all true!

This book for me is one of the most unbiased approaches to anthropogy I have ever read. It shocked me that he chose to take their interviews and turn them into stories using their own language. It is as if the people were talking to the reader. The conflicts are so real and believable that I do not think that Oscar Lewis allowed his own thoughts to even be part of his work. This is not a liberals approach to changing peoples positions on an issue. It is allowing people to see what it was like to be a struggling lower class family in the 1950s.

We a given a window into a family of 4 children and their struggles from early childhood to becoming adults. We also are given a small snipet of the Father's perspective of his childrens accomplishments.

This family's life is definately not the most glamorous look into their lives but it is very honest. We get to see them go through the struggles of poverty and being parents in a country that the only way to survive was to overcome the struggles that were given to them.

I disagree with anyone who thinks Lewis is some how trying to make us simpathize with this Family. I feel he is trying to let us discover the Sanchez family for who they are and what is important to them. I have made a point to read more of his work and I have found only an honest acessment of people and the conditions they live in.

Be warned this book tells the story through a Mexican perspective and their morals do follow western views so tightly. The content that is discussed is hard and should be read with maturity.

This book is a remarkably intimate study of a family in Mexico City. How Oscar Lewis managed to get them to open up about their experiences, fears, loves, hates, dreams and suffering in such explicit detail is a mystery. Lewis must have assisted them to articulate their feelings and perspectives because their tales are beautiful to read. Five members of the Sanchez family give independent accounts of their lives of hardship. The same events in their lives are viewed from each family member's perspective providing a unique insight into the familie's life. It is particularly amazing how openly they talk about each other. I have to assume that none of them will ever read the book. Reading the account of their lives is a sociological experience that is difficult to imagine getting from a book but also a beautiful piece of writing. In my opinion a unique and outstanding achievement .

Closely follows the lives of a family of poor people in 1940s - 50s Mexico. Great insight into the life of the generation that formed modern Mexico. Classic.

I read this 40 years ago and couldn't put it down; picked it back up recently as a gift for my children - it's just a great read - Oscar Lewis makes you feel you're living through the events of these young lives - a master story-teller and Sociologist; Lewis gives the reader a captivating insight into a gritty culture and the effort to find values told through the eyes of one family growing up poor in Mexico. "Must-read" is much overused; but this book - truly - is on the list of books every thinking American "must read" at least once in a lifetime; too explicit for young minds - say, under-16.

It was hard for me to put this book down. Some of the material rings so true to life, it made me recall memories of my own childhood. Since the book is written in "four part" chapters, each part is written by one of the four Sanchez siblings: Manuel, Roberto, Consuelo, and Martha. Each one talks about his or her own experience, in a way that you get to see each of the four sides & form your own conclusion as to how life really was. I would've liked for the father, Jesus Sanchez, to have written his own "side" in the epilogue, his own way of seeing things, and why he did things the way he did. All he spoke about in the epilogue was about politics in Mexico, and he rambled on about that. He hardly talked about his children, and how they grew up. The father's epilogue at the end of the book served very little purpose in my opinion. The author's introduction was way more valuable and worthwhile. Overall this book was an excellent read, a true to life account of how life was for a typical poor family living in Mexico City. It reads like a fiction book, but it certainly is non fiction. It is never boring. Excellent, excellent book & highly recommended.

Genero: Para mi hay dos clases de géneros en esta obra, uno para las personas que solo leen el libro y pasan las paginas, y otro para los que leen entre líneas y descubren su significado real. La primera clase de genero, para este libro, sería una novela de personajes, pues son 5 personajes principales en la novela, y se centra en ellos, tiene una trama que se desarrolla a titulo de autobiografía utilizando para ello los pasajes comunes de la vida de una familia en la que cada uno de sus integrantes principales tiene un capitulo especial en cada una de las partes en que esta dividido el libro, es por ello que resulta un tanto paradójico, recoger en una sola obra ensayo, biografía, historia y novela, solamente un estudioso como Oscar Lewis podría desarrollar con tanta riqueza y detalle un estudio antropológico tan profundo y tan actual teniendo en cuenta que fue escrito sobre una familia que se inicia a finales de los años 40s y que aun hoy es constante en toda una América latina, de clases socioeconómicas tan marcadas. La segunda clase sería, la parte científica que reúne el análisis del entorno de una sociedad pobre, machista, religiosa, ignorante, orgullosa, pero en el fondo buena; de allí la importancia de esta obra, en la que sin perder el interés novelesco, se descubren narrados por ellos mismos los profundos caracteres sociológicos de los integrantes de esta familia, por lo que se puede llegar a concluir que el autor reúne en su obra, sin

confundirlos diversos géneros literarios, permitiéndole al lector conclusiones, (amar odiar sus personajes, convertirlos en buenos y malos), para entender finalmente que todo ello lleva a una explicación realista, sincera, dramática y definitiva sobre el porque Latinoamericano y es que al analizar la obra y hacerle una comparación con la realidad que vive este país hoy al terminar el siglo se podría juzgar a autor y su obra como únicos.

Tema: El libro habla sobre una familia mejicana, pobre, el padre, Jesús Sánchez nació campesino, se fue joven a la ciudad, después de la muerte de su madre, como muchos otros, para buscar fortuna y como les paso a todos estos le toco trabajar como obrero, portero o aseador, se caso ya en la ciudad con Leonor y tuvo 4 hijos, Manuel, Roberto, Consuelo y Marta, el libro empieza en si cuando la madre se muere, todos estaban muy chiquitos, y cada uno cuenta su historia desde ese momento hasta que ya son adultos y con familia. El libro se divide en tres partes, en las cuales los cuatro hijos narran sus historias de una manera simple, en la primera parte es desde la muerte de la madre, hasta que cumplen la mayoría de edad, el otro es cuando son jovenes-adultos, y el ultimo ya cuando son padres y Jesús es abuelo, este solo narra al principio, sobre su vida en el campo y la llegada a la ciudad, y al final cuando considera que como padre ha fracasado. Cada historia que narran esta llena de aventura, de amor, de drama, de sentimientos humanos sencillos, de esperanzas fallidas y de un permanente intento de mejorar sus vidas, es la respuesta a una vida llena de necesidades que justifica en muchos casos actos que rayan en el delito o aun en el incesto y actos reprobables a primera vista, cada personaje de una manera original, pero sencilla narra su historia desde que estaba chiquito, incluyendo pasajes que pudieran parecer ridículos, vergonzosos, violentos, graciosos o aun sin importancia, pero sobretodo vistos desde su individual punto de vista. Vale la pena comparar la importancia que a cada episodio le da cada integrante de la familia, por ejemplo Roberto Sánchez, el segundo de los hijos de Jesús, le da muy poca importancia a la época de su infancia, y en cambio detalla mucho mas su juventud y su vida de adulto, cuando el se escapa de la casa sus dos hermanas Consuelo y Marta narran el episodio con miedo con angustia y con tristeza, sin embargo Manuel su hermano mayor, ni siquiera lo menciona, Manuel por ejemplo para demostrar su hombría ante la figura de su padre decide desde muy joven participar en pandillas, llamadas en Méjico palomillas, cosa que sus hermanos no solamente justifican sino que admiran y como en el caso de Roberto las imita. Sus hermanas cuentan sus historias de una manera tierna, añorando en muchos casos una caricia o un cariño por parte de su padre o quizas un juguete, y justificando por la educación que han recibido las actuaciones machistas de los hombres de la familia, la pobreza retratada por cada uno de los personajes y justificada como un modo de vida general de la sociedad le da un carácter único a una obra que estará presente en la mente de cualquiera que la lea para entender la problemática latinoamericana, que como se dijo antes, no ha cambiado en los últimos 50 años.

Calidad: Se puede calificar este como un libro de superior calidad, en el cual, con sencillas palabras se logran sorprendentes resultados, su lectura es fácil, sus permanentes argumentos son sencillos y llenos de colorido muy mejicano que narran aspectos de la vida simple, con un idioma bien manejado llevando de la mano para que sea él, el que escoja el énfasis que le da a su narrativa, el lenguaje utilizado esta lejos de ser científico o pretencioso, pero de todas maneras es entendible para el lector. El sistema de la narración que recoge en la introducción la primera parte de la vida de Jesús Sánchez y divide las de sus cuatro hijos para terminar con un epilogo también narrado por Manuel, es original y nos muestra la capacidad del autor para imponerle a su obra una mejor calidad narrativa. La historia es contada de una manera simple sin pretensiones de profundidad sicología que logra que el lector se involucre y tome partido a favor o en contra de cada una de las actuaciones de los integrantes de esta singular pero común familia. El sistema de grabaciones directas y versiones taquigraficas empleada por Lewis es original y realista y me permite calificar esta obra como una de las de mas altas calidades literarias que he leído hasta ahora.

As Oscar Lewis is not one of the Sanchez children you will be disappointed if you are expecting to read a narrative of his life. This is not an autobiography.

I was fascinated, enthralled and moved by this compelling self portrait of the Sanchez family. As a former resident of Mexico City I found it a revealing look at a side of life there that I was only vaguely familiar with. Even though the life stories being told were compiled fifty years ago, the book is still very relevant today. I'm not sure why Lewis's Culture of Poverty theory was so discredited - maybe it has to do with a sense that he is blaming the victim - but the evidence he presents is quite convincing, even though the reader does wonder how much he edited the data to make it fit his ideas.

I received this book as a Christmas gift (Hanukka actually). I really enjoyed this story. You could substitute almost any impoverished (Emerging Nation) group, and their story would be similar. Access to general (compulsory) education and family planning, and low cost birth control, would be a great foundation in facilitating the escape from poverty within one generation. Having said that, poverty is subjective, and often connected with culture.

The Children of Sanchez is definitely worth your time.