We had 13 book club members who had read the book. Some
weren’t sure what to think of the book, but as they got into it they wanted to
find out what happened. Some wants to shake some sense into some of the
characters. Multiple readers liked the ending despite having a hard time
getting into the book.
Several readers liked the focus on a large, extended family.
One liked the focus on the immigrant family experience in California. Another
member liked the exploration of grief. She found it heartwarming and containing
truths. Multiple members struggled to keep straight the long list of characters
in this extended family, and many people had printed out a character list
they’d found online (one even constructed a family tree to keep characters
straight).
Several liked the humorous parts, particularly the story
about the border crossing where the drunk parrot got the attention of the
border patrol. One reader thought that audiobook wasn’t a good format for this
book because it was particularly hard to track all of the characters, although
the narration, done by the author, was very good. Another reader listened to
the audiobook and just decided to let go of tracking the characters, trying
instead to just figure out what generation of the family they were in relation
to Big Angel.
We started our discussion with some background about the
settings and the author. Group leader Mary gave some background about his life,
in Mexico and then in the United States. We discussed the San Diego / Tijuana
border area. We discussed the differences in border crossing from years ago and
now, and were surprised in the depiction in the book that decisions about
crossing may be up to the discretion of the specific border patrol rather than
any fixed rules.
We discussed how the author struggled as his parents
(Mexican father and American mother) played tug of war over culture for the
household. The group discussed what it would be liked to be raised in a
household with two different cultures.
In discussing the book itself, we noted how Big Angel was
trying so hard to make strides and overcome his background, but his children
didn’t all embrace them. It started from the first line, with the emphasis on
Big Angel not wanting to be late to overcome the stereotype, and that his
children didn’t embrace it.
Members of the group who were teachers talked about their
experiences of teaching ESL students and whether the schools encouraged them to
allow the kids to read in their first languages.
Discussed Big Angel lamenting the “American” food served at
his birthday party and why isn’t it traditional Mexican food. We took this as a
symbol of the loss of their culture, and the end of an era as Perla was the
only one still cooking traditionally, and she wanted to retire from cooking the
family meals.
The author used Spanish language words without explaining
each word, and the group discussed whether this added or detracted from the
story. It stopped some of our readers, who felt confused, but others felt that
they understood enough from the context and felt that it would have lost
authenticity to not have any Spanish language in the dialogue.
