The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child

Front Cover
HarperCollins, Oct 25, 1999 - Juvenile Nonfiction - 128 pages

"'La frontera'...I heard it for the first time back in the late 1940s when Papa and Mama told me and Roberto, my older brother, that someday we would take a long trip north, cross la frontera, enter California, and leave our poverty behind." So begins this honest and powerful account of a family's journey to the fields of California -- to a life of constant moving, from strawberry fields to cotton fields, from tent cities to one-room shacks, from picking grapes to topping carrots and thinning lettuce. Seen through the eyes of a boy who longs for an education and the right to call one palce home, this is a story of survival, faith, and hope. It is a journey that will open readers' hearts and minds.

 

Contents

Under the Wire
1
Soledad
8
Inside Out
12
Miracle in Tent City
22
El Angel de Oro
36
Christmas Gift
42
Death Forgiven
47
Cotton Sack
51
Learning the Game
70
To Have and to Hold
80
Moving Still
94
A Note from the Author
112
Back Flap
117
Back Cover
118
Spine
119
Copyright

The Circuit
61

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About the author (1999)

Francisco Jiménez emigrated from Tlaquepaque, Mexico, to California, where he worked for many years in the fields with his family. He received both his master’s degree and his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is now the chairman of the Modern Languages and Literature Department at Santa Clara University, the setting of much of his newest novel, Reaching Out. He is the Pura Belpre Honor winning author of The Circuit, Breaking Through, and La Mariposa. He is also the recipient of the John Steinbeck Award. He lives with his family in Santa Clara, California.