Barefoot Heart by Elva Trevino Hart

Part One Migrant Workers 1. How is the title a pun (play on words)? 2. How is the title a metaphor? 3. What is a dichos? 4. Explain the following Dichos: Though you may be wealthy and tall, you will still need the poor and the small. Adversity teaches more than ten years of university. Conversation is food for the the soul. I will dance to whatever music is played. Where there is a will, there is a way. Once mounted on a horse, one must hang on when he bucks. Ch. 1-2 1. What is the setting of the novel? (1)\ 2. Why is the Trevino family going to Minnesota? (1) 3. What is the big treat for the children when they run out of tortillas and eggs? (1) 4. What is the shape of the house they stay in (1) 5. Why does Delmira want to throw out the frozen chickens that the farmer’s wife brings them? (1) 6. What do Ama and Apa buy at the store for the children to drink? (1) 7. Describe the main characters: Apa, Ama, Delia, Delmira, Luis, Diamantina, Rudy, and Elva. (1) 8. What is Apa’s dream for all his children? (1) 9. Where must Elva and Diamantina stay while their parents and siblings work in the fields? (1) 10. What does Elva keep under her pillow and in her sock every day? ) (1) 11. What does Elva do when her parents don’t come to pick them up on the weekend? (1) 12. Why did Elva’s parents not come for them, and how does Apa solve the problem? (1) 13. How do the red ribbons make Elva feel? (1) 14. What is the Tongolele? (2) 15. Who tries to do the Tongolele, and why does she swear never to do it again? (2) Ch. 3-5 9. What happens in Dallas on the second trip to Minnesota? (3) 10. Why does Apa become angry with Luis and throw away the directions to the two-burner gas stove? (3) 11. How does Elva occupy herself while her family works in the fields? 12. Why does Luis cry when the family arrives back at the house after working in the fields? (3) 13. Who does Delmira swear she will not marry? (3) 14. What happens to Ama when she has a trastornado? What sets off her trastornado? (3) 15. What does Nina, Ama’s sister ask of her? (4) 16. What is a curandero? (4) 17. Who is Hilda? Why is Elva jealous of Hilda, and why is Hilda jealous of Elva (4) 18. Why does Elva dream that she is adopted? (4) 19. What is Apa’s story about the melons? (5) 20. Why did Apa’s family leave Mexixo? (5) 21. How did Ama’s father lose his money? (5) 22. How old were Ama and Apa when they married? (5) 23. Who was Petra? (5) 24. What kind of milk did Ama give her children as toddlers? (5) 25. How many dresses did Delia and Delmira have for school? (5) 26. How does Apa punish his children for lying that the ranch owner’s house is theirs? (5) 27. What were Luis and Rudy allowed to do that the girls weren’t when it rained?(5) 28. Why did Apa tie Delmira’s hands behind her back? (5) 29. Why does Rudy become the favorite son even though Luis is the oldest son? (5) Ch. 6-7 30. How were the schools segregated in Pearsall? Who went to the Westside School and who was sent to the Eastside School? (6) 2

31. What happened to children who spoke Spanish in school? (6) 32. What games do they play on the playground? (6) 33. What does Ama do that makes Elva feel loved? (6) 34. Who is Kit? Who is Star? (7) 35. What do Elva and Diamantina have to do when they are at Kit’s house when her mother comes home? (7) 36. Why is Elva afraid of Kit? 37. Why does Elva think she is not invited back to play with Twyla and Junior? (7) 38. Why can’t Elva go to the birthday party of Gloria’s friend Missy? (7) 39. How did Elva feel when her mother bought her the baby-blue jacket? (7) 40. Who was the story teller? (7) Ch. 8-10 41. Why does Apa decide to build a house for his family? (8) 42. Who is Hilda and why do they have to move out of /Tia Nina’s house? (8) 43. What fiesta takes place almost in Elva’s backyard? (8) 44. What happens to Apa’s avocado tree? (8) 45. What does Elva decide when she overhears the pachucas talking? (8) 46. What is classism? Explain Elva and Lourdes relationship in terms of classism? (8) 47. What is a short hoe? Why was it outlawed? (9) 48. What does Rudy do to Luis and why? (9) 49. When the family foes to town, what movie do the children go see? (9) 50. Who\is Margie (10) 51. What happens to her brother, Hugo? (10)

Part II Farther Migrations Explain the following dichos: Hope is not brad, yet it nourishes. It’s a long way from word to deed. A horse that soars doesn’t/t need spurs. Where is your land? It is where you pass your days, not the place where you were born. He who doesn’t look ahead remains behind. Ch. 11-14 52. What does Elva win in the third grade? 53. Mrs. Winters was known as the meanest teacher in school. What lesson did Elva learn from her father about being around mean people that helped her deal with Mrs. Winters (11) 54. Did the family still go to Minnesota as migrant workers to work in the fields? (11) 55. What does Elva do with her hair to show she was growing up? (11) 56. What expensive instrument does Apa buy for Elva? Why do you think he buys it for her? How does this purchase show how Elva was treated differently from her brothers and sisters? (11) 57. What does Rudy do when he sees Elva picking up trash on the playground? Does Elva appreciate his action? (11) 58. Who does Elva meet at the Fiesta? (11) 59. After graduation, what does Elva want to do? (11) 60. What happens at the beginning of the 5th grade? (11) 61. What happens to Gilbert in the art contest? (12) 62. Which sister elopes? Where does she move? (12) 63. Why does Delmira break off her engagement with Al? (12) 64. Who does Delmira end up marrying? (12) 65. When Elva is in the sixth grade, what opens in town? How does this change Elva’s life? (13) 66. Where does Elva go the summer after sixth grade? (13) 67. What did Elva discover in the seventh grade? (14) 68. What does Elva do with the planaria? (14) 69. What happens with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn? (14) Ch. 15-18 70. What does segregation even extend to in Pearsall? (15) 71. What two types of teachers teach in Pearsall? (15) 3

72. Why does Elva like math? (15) 73. Who is Mr. Derderian and what happens to him? (15) 74. Why is Elva determined to beat Mrs. Ballard’s system? What does she want to prove? (15) 75. Describe Tio Manujes. How does Elva do with the problem he gives her? What does she resolve to do after this experience? (15) 76. Describe Elva’s summer experience picking cantaloupes and why it is easier than her sibling’s experience in the fields? (16) 77. What do Gloria and David do to stand up to the racism at school? (16) 78. Describe Elva’s summer travels. (16) 79. Describe Elva’s trip to Mexico with her parents. Why does she wonder who she is at the end of the trip? (17) 80. What differences does Elva notice about Mexico as compared to her life in America? (17) 81. What dream of Apa’s is realized on Elva’s graduation night? (17) 82. What honor does Elva gain in her senior year? (18) 83. As Elva graduates from high school, how does she feel about embarking on the next part of her life? (18) Part III Returnings Explain the following dichos: I can talk about that road because I’ve walked it. He who lives with hope dies happy. He who walks with wolves learns to howl. Ch. 19-21 84. What does Elva find when she goes back to Minnesota forty years later? (19) 85. What does she discover about the stop-sign-shaped house they lived in when they were migrant workers? How does she feel about this discovery? (19) 86. What does Elva finally tell her dad when he is eighty? How does she insist that he treat her? (20) 87. What does Rudy tell the doctor when Apa is dying in the hospital? (20_ 88. Who does Elva work for after she earns her Master’s degree from Stanford? (212) 89. How much does she tell Apa she makes at her new job? Is this true? (21) 90. Why does she quit the corporate life and begin to write? (212)

Quotations Who said the quotation and to whom, what is the context (what is happening when it is said) and what is the meaning (what is the main idea the person is trying to convey, how does the quotation support a theme in the novel, how does the quotation relate to life in general)? Part I (Ch. 1-10) 1. I am nobody. (p.1) 2. I felt her love and her warmth and her matter-of-fact caring about me. That’s the way my mother’s love for was, matter-of-fact. . . .It was always there. A secure place that I could depend on. (78) 3. They paid her even though she would have done it for free, just for free, just for the experience of being surrounded by all that clean luxury for the evening. (84) 4. My father always demanded more of his children than seemed fair. (87) 5. I thought the flights of fancy that her stories took me on were now gone forever. I was doomed to living in this world. But I was wrong. I found them again in books. (97) 6. Having lived in other people’s houses, barns, and in migrant housing in various stages of decay and repair, it felt as though we could make a home out of anything. (99) 7. Death was an integral part of my growing up time. (137) Part II (Ch. 11-18 8. I decided to work hard, lay low, and be quiet. (141) 9. Spoken appreciation and gratitude were rare in our family. I was full of them and I had no model for how to let them out. (144) 10. Do you really think you want to go to college? I think it’s probably pretty hard. (151) 11. They said he couldn’t possibly have drawn the poster. (154) 12. Don’t you realize you can never fit in here? This marriage is impossible. (161) 13. You’re going to go blind reading all those books! You’re going to go crazy reading all those books! (164) 14. As their world opened up, they opened up mine. (166) 15. In Pearsall, even the cemeteries were segregated. (174) 4

16. In math there was only one right answer. (177) 17. I had finally found a place where I could not only be equal to the gringos, but clearly better. (180) 18. It was only one of many times he had called me a useless girl. (182) 19. We would be shocked to learn that one of ours had gone out on a secret date with someone from the other side of the tracks. (189) 20. But inside I wondered who we were, especially who I was. (204) 21. I still felt like a Mexican migrant child with dirty, bare feed playing at the edge of the field. (206) 22. I had to sever all ties and try my own wings-alone. (207) Part III (Ch. 19-21) 23. Now for the first time, knowing the history of the stop-sign-shaped building, I was ashamed of the life we had led. (217) 24. Apa, I’m not used to being ordered around. Not even my husband orders me around. (223) 25. Let him go. Don’t keep him here by force. (226) 26. This was big stuff for a barefoot migrant kid. (229) 27. My childhood issues were abandonment, feeling less-than because I was Mexican, and shame that I was a “useless girl” in my father’s eyes. (233) 28. I read it to my siblings. The pain diminished even further. (233) 29. I pulled my heart and soul back from IBM. (234) 30. I had cut an emotional artery; I was bleeding profusely and I didn’t know how to turn it off. (235) 31. So I decided to embrace the ugliness of the migrant years. I took the ugliness into my lap as I would an unappealing child. I kissed it and held it until it quieted. (236) 32. He who cannot howl, will not find his pack. (236)