How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner too. I come from a place that's so different from here you would think you'd stepped right off the map into some other country where they use dirt for decoration and the national pastime is having babies. People don't look the same, talk the same, nothing. Half the time I have no idea what's going on around me here. (9.36)
Taylor's sense that Tucson is a foreign country compared to Pittman County helps her to identify with refugees like Estevan and Esperanza. However, although she means well, Taylor sometimes forgets that, unlike her friends, she can travel throughout America without fear of being arrested and deported back to where she came from. When it comes right down to it, Taylor's citizenship gives her fundamental privileges that her friends may never have.
Quote #8
We were stopped by Immigration about a hundred miles this side of the New Mexico border. Mattie had warned me of this possibility and we had all prepared for it as best we could. Esperanza and Estevan were dressed about as American as you could get without looking plain obnoxious: he had on jeans and an alligator shirt donated from some church on the east side where people gave away stuff that was entirely a cut above New To You. Esperanza was wearing purple culottes, a yellow T-shirt, and sunglasses with pink frames. (14.1)
What is it, exactly, about Estevan and Esperanza's outfits that makes them seem so quintessentially "American"? Do they sound kind of like hipsters, and is that what makes America America?
Quote #9
Estevan and I talked about everything you could think of. He asked me if the alligator was a national symbol of the United States, because you saw them everywhere on people's shirts, just above the heart.
"Not that I know of," I told him. It occurred to me, though, that it might be kind of appropriate. (14.21-22)
Although neither Estevan nor Taylor recognize Lacoste branding when they see it (which means he's looking a bit more preppy than hipster on this fine day), this passage is a neat little window into the power of corporate branding. Symbolically, what would the alligator (or crocodile) meanif it really were a national symbol of the United States? How would you compare it to, say, the bald eagle? Why didn't Lacoste want a bird above the shirts on those gorgeous pastel-hued polos of theirs?