Esperanza Rising Essay

I have chosen to do my final project on the fiction novel, Esperanza Rising written by Pam Muñoz Ryan. The novel, Esperanza Rising was published in the year 2000 by Scholastic Inc., in New York, New York.
Esperanza Rising is a fiction novel about a young girl named Esperanza Ortega. The story first takes place in the mid 1920’s, years after the Mexican Revolution, on a ranch in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Esperanza Ortega is from a wealthy family, as her father is an affluent landowner. However, Esperanza’s father is killed by outlaws who still remained resentful to landowners after the Mexican revolution ended. Thereafter, the Ortega family continues to experience more struggles which causes them to escape to California during the time of the Great Depression. Esperanza is faced with new challenges of a drastically different lifestyle full of manual labor, financial and economic hardship, and personal battles as she lives in a labor camp in California. As time passes, a situation occurs which puts Esperanza’s family in jeopardy, in doing so, Esperanza takes course in this new challenge to save her family.

It is influenced by her grandmother, Esperanza Ortega’s life story and her experience from when she fled from Mexico to California. While it may be a fictional story, it is personally inspired by a close family member who lived through similar challenges. In addition, I appreciate how the author has done extensive historically based social research to allow the story to be as authentic as possible. Moreover, I chose this novel because it takes place during the Great Depression period focusing on the agricultural labor camps. I have no previous knowledge specifically in this area, and would like to learn and understand how this certain place and era affected people’s lives, society, environment, and