BEFORE WE WERE FREE, by Julia Alvarez

Among the projects I'm doing this summer is a do-it-yourself paint job of the exterior of our house. On days when it isn't too hot or humid, I enjoy being out there, scraping paint and listening to an audiobook.

Today, I started listening to Julia Alvarez's Before We Were Free. Published in 2002 by Knopf Books for Young Readers, it won the Pura Belpre Award in 2004.

Chapter one opens with this:

"May I have some volunteers?" Mrs. Brown is saying. We are preparing skits for Thanksgiving, two weeks away. Although the Pilgrims never came to the Dominican Republic, we are attending the American school, so we have to celebrate American holidays.

That opening was unexpected. But because I've read one of Alvarez's other books, my ears perked up. Where, I wondered, would this particular scene go in Alvarez's skilled hands! Mrs. Brown picks Anita (the protagonist) and her cousin, Carla, to play the parts of two Indians who will welcome the Pilgrims because,

Mrs. Brown gives the not-so-good parts to those of us in class who are Dominicans.

Mrs. Brown then gives the two girls a headband with a feather sticking up like one rabbit ear. She asks them to greet the Pilgrims, being played by two boys wearing Davy Crockett hats. Anita thinks

Even I know the pioneers come after the Pilgrims.

Mrs. Brown asks Anita/the Indian to welcome the pilgrims "to the United States" but Oscar raises his hand and asks:

"Why the Indians call it the United States when there was no United Estates back then, Mrs. Brown?"

Some kids make fun of him. Anita hates it when the Americans make fun of the way the Dominicans speak English. Mrs. Brown tells him that

"It's called poetic license. Something allowed in a story that isn't so in real life."

Beautifully done, Ms. Alvarez! I'm hooked.

Julia Alvarez's RETURN TO SENDER

Yesterday, I started reading Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender. I'm taking a minute this morning to say a couple of things about it before I dash out the door for the morning.

First, here's what Alvarez says about it on her website:

The seed for the novel came when I got involved translating at local schools for the children of Mexican migrant workers who have now made their way up to Vermont. (And boosted our compromised Latino population!) These workers are now doing the milking on many of our dairy farms. Without them, many of our small farmers could not survive, as they, too, are being squeezed by the high cost of farming and a dearth of workers.

Seeing how baffled the Mexican children and their classmates were about how to understand this situation that had thrown us all together, I thought: we need a story to understand what is happening to us! The title comes from a dragnet operation that the Department of Homeland Security conducted in 2006, named, Return to Sender. Work places were raided and undocumented workers were seized. Their children were the biggest casualties of this operation -- left behind to be soothed and reassured until they could be finally reunited with their parents.

The boy on the cover is Tyler. His family owns one of the dairy farms that hires Mexican migrant workers. The girl is Mari. I had a lump in my throat as I read about these two young people trying to make sense of the world and each other's world, too. Alvarez has done a terrific job showing all three.

Part of Tyler's world is his life at school. There, one of Tyler's teachers is a woman named Ms. Ramirez. Sprinkled in the first part of the book are references to Mexican culture, and, references to American Indian culture. Tyler has learned about the Trail of Tears. I liked seeing it in Alvarez's book. Tyler's world is enlarged by his teachers.

More later...