Our staff created more suggested readings that are real classics. We hope you will enjoy them.
And the Earth Did Not Part/ y no se lo tragó la tierra
One of the first Mexican American writers to use the migrant experience as a primary focus in fiction was Tomàs Rivera, a native of Crysrtal City, Texas. And the Earth Did Not Part/ y no se lo tragó la tierra was first published in 1971 after it won a Quinto Sol Award. The fourteen inter-connected stories are based on Rivera’s experiences as a migrant worker in the 19405 and 1950s. A well-known educator and advocate of Chicano literature, Rivera overcame the poverty of his childhood and youth and was chancellor at the University of California at Riverside when he died in 1984.
Today Rivera’s legacy lives on at the Tomàs Rivera Policy Institute in California, which “promotes the well-being of the Latino population of the United States,” and the Tomàs Rivera Mexican American Children’s Book Award, established in 1995 at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas. This award is presented annually for children’s and young adult literature that portrays Mexican American culture in a positive manner. Pat Mora’s Tomàs and the Library Lady (1997) is based on the real-life experience of young migrant worker Rivera and the Iowa librarian who introduced him to the world of books. Beloved by librarians across the country, Mora’s picture book is a tribute ro her one-time co-worker Tomàs Rivera. Fittingly, it was awarded the Tomàs Rivera Award in 1997.
Their Eyes Were Watching God
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a 1937 novel and the best-known work by African American writer Zora Neale Hurston. The novel narrates main character Janie Crawford’s “ripening from a vibrant, but voiceless, teenage girl into a woman with her finger on the trigger of her own destiny.” Set in central and southern Florida in the early 20th century, the novel was initially poorly received for its rejection of racial uplift literary prescriptions. Today, it has come to be regarded as a seminal work in both American and African-American literature. TIME included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2003.
The Grapes of Wrath
The Grapes of Wrath is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. For it he won the annual National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for novels and it was cited prominently when he won the Nobel Prize in 1962.
Set during the Great Depression, the novel focuses on the Joads, a poor family of tenant farmers driven from their Oklahoma home by drought, economic hardship, and changes in financial and agricultural industries. Due to their nearly hopeless situation and in part because they were trapped in the Dust Bowl, the Joads set out for California. Along with thousands of other “Okies”, they sought jobs, land, dignity, and a future.
The Grapes of Wrath is frequently read in American high school and college literature classes due to its historical context and enduring legacy. A celebrated Hollywood film version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940.
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