The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
Author: Francisco Jimenez
Translator: Jeong-im Ha
Publisher: Darun
Hardcover / 200 pages / 137 * 208 mm
| Important! Please read before you order! |
| >>>This book is written in Korean. |
About This Book
Francisco Jimenez was born in Mexico, entered California illegally as a very
young child, and spent his boyhood alternating between migrant farm work and the
classroom. This collection of autobiographical short stories was written years
later, when Jimenez had become an established professor at Santa Clara
University (CA), but they give immediate access to the feelings of the growing
boy. Adrian Vargas reads in a lightly accented English, offering a voice that is
evidently that of the full grown man remembering, rather than that of the youth
he remembers. Each story is simple, direct, and redolent with the smells of the
earth, the sounds of the ever-changing home with its growing number of siblings,
and the amazing experiences each new schoolroom offers. The frustrations range
from those specific to poverty and migrancy, including the inability to follow
up on promises made by a good teacher because the family moves on the day the
offer of trumpet lessons has been proffered, through the universal experience of
an older brother saddled with an ignorant younger sibling who insensitively
feeds his prized penny collection into the grocery store's gumball machine.
Jimenez and Vargas both maintain a leisurely pace appropriate to storytelling
that can reach a wide audience, giving the images constructed from words time to
bloom in the audience's mind before wrapping each tale in a tight, often
surprising, close. Highly recommended for both pleasure listening and for
classroom use and discussion.
-- Francisca Goldsmith
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