Quote 1

It was always a question of work, and work depended on the harvest, the car running, their health, the conditions of the road, how long the money held out, and the weather, which meant they could depend on nothing.

This quote occurs in Chapter One as the family arrives at the new work site after having been evicted from a previous labor camp. In this passage, Viramontes underscores the instability of the lives of the family, and of migrant laborers in general. Throughout the book, the uncertainty of life is a major theme, and this quote reveals the vulnerability of the laborers, who, despite working themselves past exhaustion every day, are paid only enough to afford the barest necessities. This early passage provides a succinct list of the many things outside of the workers’ control that determine whether they can work, whether they’ll have to uproot their lives and start over, and whether they will have food to fill their stomachs. Over the course of the book, car failures, health crises, a lack of money, and the brutal sun will endanger the family, all circumstances foreshadowed by this grim quote.

Quote 2

Don’t let them make you feel you did a crime for picking the vegetables they’ll be eating for dinner. If they stop you, if they try to pull you into the green vans, you tell them the birth certificates are under the feet of Jesus…

This quote occurs in Chapter Two when Estrella is angry and afraid because La Migra, the border patrol, is seen around the labor camp. Estrella panics, but Petra reassures her with these words, reinforcing the theme in the novel that laborers support the United States and should be appreciated and recognized for their necessary work. At this point in the novel, Petra seems to the reader to be speaking metaphorically when she says the birth certificates are “under the feet of Jesus,” as if she means that Estrella belongs to God and that her citizenship is therefore irrelevant. Later in the novel it becomes apparent that Petra is speaking literally. Her children’s birth certificates are stored in a manilla envelope in her altar, under the feet of her statue of Jesus. This placement emphasizes their importance to Petra, both as valuable documents making her children citizens and as representative of the children themselves, whom Petra loves above all else.

Quote 3

Estrella wanted to tell the mother, to say, Mama, take a look at that, but a woman walked in the store and toppled the peak by removing the top single red one, shiny as new love, and it was as easy to dismantle all that work as it was to kick a can in the road.

This passage appears in Chapter Four after Estrella has threatened the nurse at the clinic with a crowbar to get back the money the family has paid so they can buy gas to get Alejo to the hospital. Alejo has criticized her violent behavior, saying that she acted just the way that people like the nurse expect migrant laborers to act. Estrella, in turn, is disappointed that Alejo has accepted their low opinion of him, and that he believes his life is not worth fighting for. In that moment, Estrella has a memory of ideal beauty, a meticulously stacked arrangement of bell peppers in a store she once visited with her mother. The stack of bell peppers is a symbol of perfection, a theme throughout the novel, and it is destroyed carelessly and effortlessly. This image illustrates how hard-won beauty and stability created can be spoiled in a moment, by people and forces that do not even acknowledge the damage they’ve done.

Quote 4

He had given this country his all, and in this land that used his bones for kindling, in this land that never once in the thirty years he lived and worked, never once said thank you, this young woman who could be his granddaughter had said the words with such honest gratitude, he was struck by how deeply these words touched him.

At the end of Chapter Four, when the family arrives at the hospital, Estrella thanks Perfecto for driving Alejo to the hospital after Petra wanted to give up on him. Perfecto’s daily life is filled with dutiful hard work, but very little tenderness. This moment touches him because he is unaccustomed to thanks for his work. Throughout the novel, there is a theme of the invisibility of the labor of people like Perfecto, who has spent a lifetime working without recognition. The metaphor of the country using his bones for kindling is a stand-in for the harsh reality that through his physical labor, his body has been consumed to create of a prosperous life for Americans. This is an example of this theme of bodily exploitation, that the work of providing food and shelter for richer people literally destroys the bodies of the laborers. By the age of thirty-five, Petra’s legs are unable to carry her, damaged by years of relentless work, and Alejo’s youth—and possibly his life—have been taken by pesticide poisoning. Likewise, Perfecto has been physically and mentally used up by a lifetime of thankless work. This passage shows the dignity and acknowledgement a fellow worker like Estrella can show him, when the larger and more powerful world ignores his existence.

Quote 5

That was all she had: papers and sticks and broken faith and Perfecto, and at this moment all of this seemed as weightless against the massive darkness, as the head she held.

This quote occurs in Chapter Five, at the end of the book, when Petra is feeling powerless and hopeless. Because years of hard labor have left her too weak to stand up from her altar, she has accidentally knocked down and broken her Jesus statue, an example of the theme throughout the novel of the physical ravages of field work and the ways that the pain and damage can seep into every part of life. Petra counts on many things for protection: her children’s legal papers, the stick she uses to draw a circle of protection against scorpions around their home, religious faith, and Perfecto. The destruction of the statue, a symbol of Petra’s religious faith, causes her to feel that these protective things are “weightless,” unequal to the forces and pressures that make the family’s life all but impossible. The darkness of the night represents the apparent hopelessness of Petra’s future, with a broken body, hungry children, and the man she has depended on to make her life better on the threshold of abandoning her while she is pregnant with his child.

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