A clever story

Migrant Daughter Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman University of California Press, By Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. Garcia has the uniqueness of this autobiography is that it initially originated from an oral history paper written by a student in Professor Mario T. Garcia -as history class at the University of Santa Barbara. When Mario T. Garcia read die oral history project about Frances Esquibel life, he was instantly intrigued and decided to interview this woman himself. From these extensive interviews, both Fiances Esquibel and Mario T. Garcia cowrote her autobiography. This work traces a young Mexican-American woman’s coming of age during the thirties, forties and early fifties. Fiances recalls her very early years in rural southeastern New Mexico as happy times. However, during the Great Depression she re-tells the story of being uprooted and forced to move to the San Joaquin Valley in California.

This story details Fiances’ experiences growing up in less than favorable farm-labor camps and working with her father in the fields at a young age. She recounts her life experiences from the time she was a small girl, through the years of adolescence when she discovers her gender, sexual, and ethnic identity, up to her graduation from the prestigious University of California, Berkeley, where she also married and had her first child. Frances’ story is an exceptional one not only because she was one of the few Mexican Americans, and even fewer Mexican-American women, to attend Berkeley in the post-World War II period , but also because this autobiography provides us with an important historical document. She discusses the importance of mastering the English language in order to succeed in mainstream society and although she recalls instances in which she witnessed or experienced discrimination , her tone is never that of bitterness or resentment , just matter of fact.

She never idealizes one culture over the other but states clearly that in order to succeed in society one must choose those aspects from both cultures that can help in achieving success in society. For example, Fiances maintained her native tongue, her strong work ethic learned from her parents and her Catholic upbringing , but knew that the key to her success was in her education. In conclusion, Frances’ story concerns a period in Chicano history that is still not well researched . She not only relates her experience as a Mexican American during this historical period but at the same time indirectly questions certain assumptions about Mexican history and the idea stemming from the Chicano Movement that presented Latinos as a unified subject, that is to say a homogeneous community. Esquibel attributes her drive to graduate from high school and attend college–the only person of Mexican origin in Visalia to do so–to her strong sense of independence, her love of learning, and the good advice of a few key teachers she encountered along the way. In what is in many ways an ‘Americanization narrative,’ her story stresses that it is her exceptionalism, her ‘difference’ from other barrio youth–who are seen to be hamstrung by a lack of ambition as much as by a lack of opportunity–that will allow her to ‘succeed.’ Migrant Daughter affirms rather than challenges the dominant U.S. ideology of meritocracy. Ethnicity, class, and gender discrimination are seen to impose constraints but are not ultimately viewed as limiting the attainment of the gifted. What is especially key to the achievement, the work suggests, is shedding the trappings of dysfunctional ethnic cultures and distancing oneself from one’s working-class roots, that is, one’s parents and one’s community. Much like the work of Richard Rodriguez, Migrant Daughter suggests that one can become part of the mainstream by becoming English dominant, marrying anon-Chicano, and gaining a university degree.

This testimonial continues the tradition of the acculturation narrative, here with a gender and Latina inflection. As it reinforces core values of individualism and personal merit within what is taken to be a colorblind, class-blind, and gender-blind U.S. society that provides equal opportunity to all its citizens, it will undoubtedly attract a good deal of attention.