Barrio Boy Review

Galarza, Ernesto (2011).  Barrio Boy.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Pages 250, 257 Ernesto had people in his life that encouraged him. His uncle Gustavo, who worked as a camello all his life, pointed out that Ernesto could have his choice of career – lawyer, doctor, engineer, or professor. Gustavo made Ernesto understood that books, and thereby education, were the keys to these choices and opportunities. His uncle determined that Ernesto would have more opportunities than he himself had and encouraged him to take advantage of those opportunities. Ernesto’s teacher, Mr. Everett, also recognized Ernesto’s potential and encouraged him, suggesting he join the debate team and attend Stanford after high school, making “other by-the-way comments that began to shape themselves into (his) future.”   Galarza with a union he helped organize As educators, we have the opportunity to have a profound effect on our students’ confidence. Even “by-t...

Galarza, Ernesto (2011).  Barrio Boy.  Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Pages 10-11, 20-23, 33-34, 147-160 Ernesto Galarza did not go to a formal school until after he left his childhood village of Jalco, but that does not mean that he did not begin his education there. Most people that he encountered at a young age did not have much, if any, formal education, and instead worked primarily as campesinos (men who worked in the fields). He learned in his environment, and his learning was particular to that environment. At a very young age, Ernesto fed chickens, delivered messages, did chores for his family, and explored the monte and arroyo . He also learned the directions, but instead of the cardinal directions, he learned relative directions such as cuesta arriba, cuesta abajo, bajar al agua , and subir al monte . These directions relate to landmarks in Jalco, and they would have been more useful for the villagers than the cardinal directions when describi...

Galarza, Ernesto (2011). Barrio Boy. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Part One - pp. 9-32 Part Four - pp. 216-17 In Part One of Barrio Boy , titled “In a Mountain Village,” Ernesto Galarza describes the village in which he was raised from birth to about age six, Jalcocotan, or Jalco. Jalco is a small village in the Sierra de Madre de Nayarit Mountains in Mexico. A major theme of his early childhood is a strong sense of community, with everything happening on the one unnamed street in Jalco, “because there was no other place for it to happen.” Ernesto lived in an adobe cottage with his mother, cousins, uncles, and aunts. Ernesto had a large extended family in the village and in the surrounding villages, but everyone in Jalco acted as his family, with the women requiring errands run by the nearest child, no matter if it was their child or not. Those living in the village provided support to their fellow residents in times of joy and times of crisis, such as when one...