Barefoot Heart is a memoir written by Elva Treviño Hart, a Chicana writer and activist who grew up in a migrant farm worker family in Texas during the 1940s and 1950s. The book tells the story of Hart's childhood and young adulthood, as she navigates the challenges of poverty, discrimination, and other hardships faced by her family and community.
One of the most striking aspects of Barefoot Heart is the way it portrays the resilience and resourcefulness of Hart and her family in the face of difficult circumstances. Despite being poor and facing discrimination and exploitation as migrant farm workers, Hart's family always found ways to make ends meet and create a sense of community and belonging. For example, Hart's mother would often barter with other farm workers and neighbors to get the things they needed, and the family would also rely on their own gardens and chickens for food.
Another powerful theme in Barefoot Heart is the importance of education and self-improvement in overcoming adversity. Hart's parents, who had little formal education themselves, placed a high value on education and encouraged their children to learn as much as they could. Hart herself excelled in school and eventually became the first in her family to graduate from college. She later went on to earn a master's degree and become a teacher, using her education to give back to her community and help other disadvantaged students.
A third theme that emerges in Barefoot Heart is the role of community and relationships in overcoming adversity. Hart's family and community were always there to support and help each other, whether it was sharing resources, offering emotional support, or advocating for each other. Hart's relationships with her parents, siblings, and extended family were particularly strong, and she credits them with helping her to stay grounded and find meaning in life despite the many challenges she faced.
Overall, Barefoot Heart is a poignant and inspiring memoir that illustrates the resilience and determination of a young Chicana woman as she navigates the challenges of poverty, discrimination, and other hardships. Through her story, Hart shows how education, resourcefulness, and strong relationships can help us overcome even the most difficult circumstances and build a better future for ourselves and our communities.
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by Elva Treviino Hart
Like walking a new path, barefoot in nature, there are uncertainties and amazing destinations if you keep an open heart. This holistic approach educates you in learning why and how these changes need to take place to achieve healing, awareness, and peace. Her father was a naturalized American citizen and her mother and all the children were American citizens by birth, but her father had never complete more than five years of elementary school and could only find labor work, which paid very low. It is not a page turner. I know things now about the world that I didn't know before I read this. Time for ME is making space to be with oneself, to sit still, take time away from the everyday, and just be.
Analysis of Barefoot Heart
The warmth of her family and community, her growing awareness of her self and the place that the world had assigned to her, are all beautifully presented. Two theorists that discuss the meaning of assimilation in their writings are Stephen Steinberg in his book, Ethnic Myth, and Milton Gordon in his book Assimilation in American Life. It is a space that offers a chance to step away from the everyday,'see' ways of being or doing that aren't working for you anymore and what does. The father, Apa, wanted all six of his children to graduate from high school, so he would not leave before school was finished. Author is a very young child in 1953, the only date mentioned so far. I'm always looking for ways to bring forth my heART to this world. I think with books like this one and the Diary of Anne Frank, it helps to know the ending as you read.
Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by Elva Treviño Hart
Hart looks back at those memories with, what seems to me, the bitter angst and intellectual condescension that surely was lent to her in academic writing groups or an editor with a carbon-copied memoir formula. In My Ántonia Willa Cather really focuses on the struggles that immigrants face upon arriving to their new country. Hart also describes how her "friendship" with the farm owner's daughter makes her recognize her poverty and makes her feel ashamed, even though she loves to ride the girl's horse and see her nice things. Instead, Hart eloquently reveals the harsh toll that poverty and discrimination took on her family--in sharply etched portraits of Ama, Hart's worn-out mother who clearly loved her daughter but was too exhausted to show it; of her brother Rudy, who refused to sit at the back of the bus because he was a Mexican; and of her teenage sisters, who struggled to keep their dignity in the muddy fields. For what it is worth, however, while these missing pieces mar the narrative with red herrings here and there, they still provide some touching moments. She spent most of her childhood moving back and forth between south Texas and Minnesota. We see that it is very hard for them to incorporate themselves and assimilate as their citizenship status hinders their ability to attain necessary resources.
ABOUT
There is no mention of a spiritual dearth, but of course that isn't as intellectually trendy. As long as man has been alive, they have always told stories, connecting and sharing with each other. My own personal journey to health and well-being factors greatly into my practice and how I guide clients. Sadly, the many beautiful passages of this book which were the spare, matter-of-fact descriptions, not the extra analysis that was intended to be beautiful were overshadowed by the underlying, unsatisfied tone of the whole book. Yet, when she grows into her wild success and subsequently finds herself empty--and the implication, as far as I could tell, is that all of this is a period of her life without religion--she harks back for reconciliation with an oppressed childhood as the means for healing. When she is little, she sits on the side of the road while her family works in the field: she feels abandoned. She does everything she can to do well in school and be the best, but when she is chosen as valedictorian, she dislikes being set apart from the other students.
