Synopsis of the book reading event: “The Tortilla Curtain” by Mr. T.C. Boyle.

By: Shubhangi Vaidya.

Indian Business & Professional Women (IBPW - www.ibpw.net) and Silicon Valley Reads (www.siliconvalleyreads.org) presented the annual book reading event of 2007 on February 11th at India Community Center (ICC - www.indiacc.org). This year’s event also included a panel discussion on Immigration issues, since it was relevant to the subject of the book.

The panelists were:

Rudy Rodriguez: Mexican Heritage Plaza.

The program started with a brief overview of IBPW from executive director Monica Kumar, followed by an introduction to the speakers which was given by Deepka Lalwani, the founder and executive director of IBPW.

Shubhangi Vaidya started off stating that Mr. Boyle is a very versatile author who can uniquely blend tragedy and comedy together. To illustrate this, she referred to his latest creations of this decade including “Talk Talk” which came out in 2006.

Then Shubhangi went into the novel “Tortilla Curtain” for which Mr. Boyle took a lot of initial abuse before it became a modern classic. She thought that Mr. Boyle is conveying his choice for the title of this book when he introduces the character of Candido clutching to the symbolic bag of tortilla which is a veil; either side of which are two completely contradictory characters that the readers are about to get to know.

Shubhangi noticed that Mr. Boyle has subtly picked up and pin-pointed the exact human behavior and reaction when one ends up in an accident. His classic American character, Delaney sums up in one line to his wife when she questions him as to how he could settle a road accident in just twenty dollars, by simply saying, “I told you, he was a Mexican.”

She also mentioned how a self-confident, “can handle it all” kind of a woman is all shaken up when she encounters two shady men on an isolated property. No matter where you stand in society or race, the physical power of a man can generate fear in any woman.

Next, she described how the author has conveyed that you are never too old to recall your parents’ words of advice in desperate situations.

Then, Shubhangi briefly talked about how the author touches many more aspects of human nature and feelings, like never letting go of a freebie (the Thanksgiving turkey), America’s feelings while watching the well-dressed business women or Candido’s presumption about the baby being a male child.

She thought that the ending was very symbolic, brilliant and witty. The author says that Candido, America and Delaney were saved by the roof of “The United States Post Office”. Mr. Boyle has put forward his wit or sarcasm towards the Federal Government very subtly without any comment at all.

In the end, the author also leaves us wondering whether America deliberately let go of the baby. Did she actually prefer death for her own child over facing the survival challenge as a blind girl/woman with no future? Finally, Shubhangi thought that when Mr. Boyle gives his ending statement,” When he saw the white face surge up out of the black swirl of the current and the white hand grasping at the tiles, he reached down and took hold of it.”, he has brought home the fact that racism does not come from heart. The spontaneous behavior to help Delaney shows how by instinct, we are all humane and caring; only when the mind takes over the heart, we show intolerance, hatred and racism.

Shubhangi concluded saying that racism is not a basic instinct-it is not the product of the heart, but that of the brain- a very effective ending note that Mr. Boyle leaves us pondering over.

C.J Cannino next gave her perspective about the book and her interpretation about Mr. Boyle’s writing. She sympathized with the conditions and situations that the blue collared immigrants have to live with. When she was reading on, C.J was waiting for the author to reveal that America had a miscarriage; but to her surprise Mr. Boyle actually portrayed how life has its own way to continue despite the mal-nutrition and the unhygienic surroundings.

Rudy Rodriguez gave a slightly different angle to his review. He said that he enjoyed the book as it was a fictional depiction of immigrant life in Los Angeles – and it was just that - fiction and untrue. The descriptions of Mexican immigrant lifestyle in Southern California, as depicted in the book, were completely unlike the actual immigrant lifestyle. It is completely untrue that Mexican immigrants live in cardboard boxes in the woods of Topanga Canyon or cook food outdoors on camp stoves. Contrary to the pictures painted in the book, most Mexican immigrants are able to get an apartment or a house to live in and cook on regular stoves just like everyone else. Although, living at the level of low income is true; they choose to live as thrifty as possible because much of their income is sent back to Mexico to support family who stayed behind and need money to survive.

Rudy is very concerned that this book is used as an educational tool in the classroom by teachers who are unaware that this book is factually false in depicting Mexican immigrants. This is not good because many students who are learning about other cultures are being taught wrong facts about Mexican immigrants in the United States. Rudy strongly recommended that the author place a disclaimer at the beginning of the book cautioning the readers about using it as a teaching tool.

After the first round of book review, the panel went on to discuss racism and illegal immigration.

They agreed that racism is sometimes due to misunderstanding of cultural behavior. However, the factor of education, economics and social conditions also threaten those who are competing against the same opportunities which then lead to a bias perceived as racism.

Illegal immigration is an exponentially growing problem and is a major challenge to deal with. The fundamental problem is with the pre-entry measures that are being taken versus the post-entry measures to rectify the issue. Pre-entry can be better controlled by reviewing and reformatting the current visa policy, putting significant resources towards tightening the borders and above all, combating human trafficking which has become a multi-billion dollar industry.

Dealing with post-entry problem is harder for USA compared to other European countries. For example, Germany came up with an innovative approach where they encouraged illegal immigrants to reveal themselves to the authorities; in exchange, they offered free return, financial assistance to support families back home and other benefits.

They discussed California specifically where statistically it is shown that illegal immigrants comprise of one third of the population, but account for roughly 3 percent of the state’s economic output. Against this, they pay about one third of the taxes but approximately consume 3 times more welfare.

The discussion was concluded by pointing out that what we need is a dedicated police force to solely enforce immigration laws-both at the border and across the state. Also, the employers who hire illegal workers should be charged with a significant enough penalty and other fines. There was a brief mention about the Minuteman project started by a group of private citizens in the USA to monitor the border.

The event was then followed by a brief Q&A session where the audience was able to ask specific questions to the panelists.