 Stories
from a Migrant Childhood
Thursday March 20, 2003
10am-11am
Humanities Instructional Building Room 135
University of California, Irvine
We ended our HOT quarter
with a visit to campus by three eleventh-grade classrooms, two in
English Language Arts and one in History, which have been engaging
in joint work on the history and literature of migrant farm labor
in the US. Graduate workshop leaders Kir Kuiken and Eileen Luhr
supplemented John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath with The
Circuit, a memoir by Francisco Jiménez describing the
experiences of a young boy growing up in a migrant family in California
during the 1950s. The collection won several awards when it was
published in 1997, including the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for
Fiction, the California Library Association John and Patricia Beatty
Award, and the Américas Award for Children's and Young Adult
Literature.
 As
a capstone event for this project, Vicki Ruiz, Interim Director
of HOT and Professor of History and Chicano-Latino Studies at UCI,
arranged for Francisco Jimenez to visit UCI. Professor Jimenez teaches
Romance Languages at Santa Clara University; in 2002, he was named
the Outstanding University and College Professor by the Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He spoke briefly about
his research and writing methods, then read from the second volume
of his memoirs and answered questions. 80 students from Santa Ana
and their teachers along with HOT graduate and undergraduate students
and faculty, sat in our Humanities lecture room and listened spellbound
to Professor Jimenez's moving and eloquent account of his high school
years in Santa Maria. Many of us wept as he talked about the transformative
power of education in his life, including his own first reading
of Steinbeck.
 In
addition to his public talk, Professor Jimenez had dinner with HOT
graduate and undergraduate students the night before, and joined
the Santa Ana and UCI students for pizza.
On display in the lecture
room were posters designed by the HOT students. They included art
work about the history and affective experience of migrant workers,
along with songs,
poems, and narrative comments. I was very impressed by the depth
of analysis evident in this work, and Professor Jimenez was, too.
Selections from these student projects will be published in our
journal, Jupiter Launches.
Dr. Julia Lupton, HOT Director
student
songs and poems
photos from event
back to HOT home page
|
