Judith Adler Hellman's Mexican Lives

Most significant is that each of the interviews gives the reader a portrait not only of a human being, his or her work and life, what matters to him or her, and how he or she is trying to achieve a dream or simply survive, but also of a facet of the country itself. Hellman is able to give this double portrait in each interview because she focuses on the intersection of the subject's life and the nation's society, economy and politics, as well as, at times, on the international forces which affect the nation and its people. Her interviews are intriguing and compelling as portraits of individual lives, but she is just as intent on exposing changing national and global forces which create a society rife with economic and social injustice, with gaping differences between the haves and have-nots.

The author summarizes the questions with which she is particularly concerned. She wr

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uals who . . . relied for their well-being or their very survival only on themselves and their kin (11). The most striking feature of these people is their resiliency in the face of truly overwhelming stress. Their problems seem in almost every case rooted in economics, and this fact results in most other problems in their lives being associated in some way with worry about money. For example, the story of Lupe Gonzalez, the opening interview in the book, is a gripping and tragic tale of a woman who seems to be coping well under a mountain of oppressive worries. Her story is significant because it seems to combine all the factors with which the author is concerned--from the international factors of trade treaties to the hard choices a mother must make as she decides where to spend her money, which problem should be dealt with first. Lupe will be the recipient of a small windfall soon, and she has four major concerns which call for that money, although only one of those concerns can be realistically managed with the money. One of her concerns is especially telling. She wants to take the money, go to the United States on a bus, "return with an industrial sewing machine," and then, with that machine she and her sister "plan to po
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1316
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)

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