Summary of Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Children of the Land

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 I was flying back to the country of my birth with my wife, Rubi, after a twenty-year absence. I looked out the window at the desert below and realized that even though it seemed endless, the landscape had limits.

#2 My mother, the youngest of seven children, was born in 1958. She could never remember the song her father had whistled as he approached their ranch on La Loma, but she could always still hear the tune in her head many years later.

#3 Amá’s father died in 1958, leaving her to care for her three younger siblings. She would spend her days stealing eggs from the henhouse and trading them at the store for candies and a radio.

#4 Amá’s mother, Amá Julia, was a very devout Catholic. When the news came that her husband Jesús had died, she and her seven children all wore black dresses for six months as a rite of mourning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Mar 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669377375

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Insights on Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Children of the Land

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was flying back to the country of my birth with my wife, Rubi, after a twenty-year absence. I looked out the window at the desert below and realized that even though it seemed endless, the landscape had limits.

#2

My mother, the youngest of seven children, was born in 1958. She could never remember the song her father had whistled as he approached their ranch on La Loma, but she could always still hear the tune in her head many years later.

#3

Amá’s father died in 1958, leaving her to care for her three younger siblings. She would spend her days stealing eggs from the henhouse and trading them at the store for candies and a radio.

#4

Amá’s mother, Amá Julia, was a very devout Catholic. When the news came that her husband Jesús had died, she and her seven children all wore black dresses for six months as a rite of mourning.

#5

Amá Julia, the daughter of Jesús, never married. She worked all her life to pay off her father’s debt, and when she died, her family finally turned the pictures on the wall over. They mailed the pictures to the U. S. , and for the first time since she was four, Amá saw her father’s face.

#6

I wondered if there was a point when we were no longer in one country and inside another, or if there was ever a moment when we occupied no country. If ever that was possible, it was possible up in the air.

#7

Amá Julia, too young to work, walked through the damp field with no shoes, the soft dirt parting beneath her feet. She counted seeds in her hand and prayed beneath the stars. Her children would go north and leave her.

#8

I had no patience for gray. I believed in black and white and nothing else. I was afraid that if I looked too far ahead, I would miss the moment when we officially crossed over into the other country.

#9

During a storm, my Amá Julia lifted her hands high and made the sign of the cross in the air with a knife. Before her time, her mother Josefina, whom they called Pepa, used to make the sign of the cross with a child and recite the Magnificat until the storm subsided.

#10

I was constantly trying to remain visible to those I wanted to be seen by, and invisible to everyone else. I was afraid of the way I walked, and I was always paranoid about being hit by a car.

#11

Amá Julia believed that if a woman was expecting a child, she should not go outside during an eclipse and should stay away from the windows. She had to wear red underwear or at least something red on her and safety pins on her body.

#12

Death was different in the past. It was something they allowed into their house. It was something they touched. The objects they placed on top of the soul-less bodies during the wake carried considerable weight, as if to say This will keep you away.

#13

I began to feel like I was in between two opposing magnets – the United States and Mexico – and one was stronger than the other. I didn’t want to find a home, but I wanted an origin. I wanted to know what it felt like to be untethered.

#14

I knew that I was supposed to be grateful to be able to go back, because only two other