This study will examine Victor Villasenor's Rain of Gold, focusing on the life style options available to Mexican migrants to the United States in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The study will include consideration of assimilation, maintenance of cultural identity, marriage and family life, education, work, and other aspects of life for Mexican Migrants after the Revolution as described in Villasenor's history of the two sides of his family.
In general, the life style options for Mexican immigrants to the United States after the 1910 Revolution were very limited. At the same time, the fortitude and determination of the Mexicans to maintain and nourish their culture and sense of community remained strong. They took advantage of the opportunities which were available. The sense of endurance and celebration, along with a deep faith in God, is expressed in the author's report on the last day of the life of his Aunt Maria:
She'd been bedridden for nearly three years, but . . . when she heard that my father was giving a fiesta . . . for my mother and all of the girls . . . she bought herself a new pink dress, had her hair fixed and came in her wheelchair. She ate and drank and laughed all evening . . . and then went home and died in her sleep that night---dreaming to awake on the other side of life, a miracle of God's. Amen (Villasenor 559).
Running through this book are a number of threads which hold together the fabric of Mexican life in the United States---the threads of family, of culture, of community, and of God. The overall impression that these threads give the reader is that these people had a determination to be happy, to enjoy life, despite the suffering and setbacks of life in a new, strange and often inhospitable land. The author recalls his father speaking about his mother:
She was the richest human on earth, I tell you. . . . She knew the secret to living, and that secret is to be happy . ....