Insulted by the Discrimination in the Story, Walkout by Lionel Shriver

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1) WALKOUT is the story of a young protagonist, Paula Crisostomo, a 17-year-old high school senior at Lincoln High School in East Los Angeles. Paula, alongside schoolmates Yoli and Bobby Verdugo, are insulted by the discriminatory treatment towards Chicano learners in the L.A. public school system- including constantly lowered expectations, poor offices, a lack of bilingual courses or reading material, unfair punishments for slight infractions, demeaning corporal punishments, and refusal to write letters of recommendation to choice universities. With the help of a teacher at their high school, Sal Castro, they devise a plan to force the school board to listen to them an appeal to their requests. This encourages these students to challenges the power of their elders for the first time in their lives by arranging a mass student walkout at five barrio secondary schools. They experience a political change, which brings about them turning into an instrumental leaders of the infamous East LA walkouts. 2) With the recently discovered spark of "Chicano force," Paula and the other student leaders start their battle to enhance the quality of their education. The crew decide to take extraordinary measures after their requests are disregarded by the school board. After Sal Castro cautions school authorities about the reality of the student’s' requests, he is disregarded and resolves to help the students in their fight for a better education. He encourages the students to organize a peaceful walkout strike with the five other high schools to ensure that no students are physically harmed. Soon after the walkouts begin, their cause becomes highly publicized and last for a few days. During one of the walkouts, students are faced with violence by ... ... middle of paper ... ...re provided with an opportunity to receive an equal education. In essence, the negative social expectations of Chicanas continue to exist because of the lack of educational opportunities which restrict them to failure and the negative stereotypes which society and schools continue to convey. 9) For the most part, reviews are positive and praise this film. I completely agree with them, this film informed me of an issue I wasn’t even aware had occurred. Before watching this film and taking this class, I was naive, I believed that after we had gained our supposedly “equal rights” everything was okay. Now, I have realized the struggles Chicanos have had to face, my eyes have been opened to these injustices and made me aware that many are still occurring today. This film and class has inspired me to take action against these injustices and stand up for what I believe in.

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