Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Honest Coming of Age Stories., May 16, 2005
I took a literature class this semester that focused largely on literature of the Mexican-American experience. "...And the Earth Did Not Devour Him" was one of my favorite books of the semester (though there were a couple that I thought were better), and it was probably my classmates' single favorite. There was certainly a large response from the students, and it was not without reason.
This book consists of several related stories. All of them are about the experience of the poor, migrant farmworker. There is such compassion and humanity in these people as they struggle to survive. The stories depict the cruelty of the life and particularly the way it is inflicted on people. There is also much about the community's ability to come together to help one another survive. Of course, there are also stories that depict the harsh pressure inflicted on relationships by the hardship of these peoples' lives. The stories usually come back to the single character, a young boy coming of age in this suffering community. His plight is particularly emphasized. He has to struggle to quell his hatred of those people who hold his fate in their hands, and he has to struggle with God. The community's faith in God offers them the only hope and meaning they have, but the boy questions a God who seems to be absent in his struggle.
Ultimately, Rivera's work is a compelling read. There are a lot of reasons to read the work. It tells an honest coming of age story, and it depicts the unique pressures of locating identity with such social hardship. There are also so many moving, provocative images in the stories. There is a lot of meaning to be found here.
I'm not a Spanish-speaker, and as such, I can't really vouch for the translation. I've heard a number of people complain about this translation, and I do doubt that it does the original full justice. It's still worth reading though. It seems that reading these stories in whatever form available is better than not reading the book at all.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Review with a Claim, April 23, 2004
-----Teachers all over America force their students to read many books to help them find self-identity in the awkward years before adulthood. Most students, for example, are forced to read Catcher in the Rye. This book recognizes issues that the white, urban, middle to upper class American youth goes through. Issues like sex, drugs, school, changes and overall life in the city. This book helps much of the youth, including myself, cope with growing up. It doesn't, however, cover the issue of segregation and poverty. These two topics are very common, and have a huge impact on much of the American youth. A book that does cover these topics, however, is one written by Tomas Rivera, entitled, And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. Tomas Rivera creates fictional short stories, from an adolescent's perspective, about real life issues for Mexican-Americans in the early to middle twentieth century. Though the stories are fiction, Rivera articulates truths about the struggles with issues like work, family, religion, poverty and segregation. Rivera has created a book that could greatly serve as a coping tool for youths that struggle with such issues. It should therefore, be brought into American school systems in order to allow students to identify with it as they mature into adults.
-----One of the short stories that pretty much discuss each of the issues including work, family, religion, poverty and segregation is, in fact, the one the book's named after, "And the Earth Did Not Devour Him." It covers not only work related issues like low pay, long hours, hot weather, unreasonable bosses, and young children working, but also poverty, family and religion. This story is about a poor family where almost all members have to help out and work. They all work on a plantation where, during the peak of summer, the sun starts to get to them and they drop like flies due to sunstroke. A young boy is witnessing this and is constantly expressing how he feels. He starts to question God. He wonders why God would do this to his kind, hard working family. He curses God and finally after doing so feels at peace. This story is one of the most powerful stories in the book. It is well written, covering many issues in only a matter of pages. Many children grow up and see their family work so hard without much to show for it. Because of this, many children blame God or question their religion. There is no answer to such frustration but this story can help be a tool to help cope with it. This is just one out of the many stories in this book that is meaningful in some aspect. Each represents a memory in a young boy's life that was important to him, in a good or bad way. Rivera effectively uses the child's memory as a way to jump from story to story. By doing this, the book doesn't get boring and he tackles many different issues.
-----This book definitely takes the role as a deconstruction literary style in the aspect that the stories can be taken more than one way. Readers could use them to cope, as a lesson, or just for entertainment. I, personally, found this book to be very moving, informative and entertaining. I became aware of how fortunate I am not to have to deal with such issues. With the deconstruction literary style in mind, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone of any age, especially a youth that has suffered from work, family, religion, poverty or segregation. Teachers should defiantly bring this book into their curriculum where it can be used to help cope with growing up or to learn about some of the struggles that many oppressed Americans, mostly Mexican Americans, went through and/or still go through.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Work, Sloppy Translation, May 1, 2000
By A Customer
I refer to the Arte Publico Press edition, translation by Evangelina-Vigil-Pinon. Rivera's sensitive, poignant and lyrical work really ought to have been copy-edited, if the translator speaks such poor English. It does no minority author any service to have his or her book filled with ignorant grammar mistakes--especially when those mistakes are not in the original Spanish.I hope, if another edition is prepared, someone will purchase a third grade grammar and correct such embarrassing errors as the use of lay when the verb is lie, possessives, and plurals.
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