Esperanza Rising

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How do you mark the passage of time? Do you count weeks, months, seasons, years? What are some other ways to mark time or talk about how much time has passed that you have heard of or learned about—either from ancient societies, your family culture, or cultures other than your own?

Teaching Suggestion: Throughout the novel, Esperanza refers to time based on what fruits or vegetables are in season while she works at the company camp. This is a change from her normal way of counting years, and it is deeply embedded in the structure of the novel. This question is meant to engage students in some outside-the-box thinking about time and changes over time. Students who need some prompting to think about this question might benefit from the resources below.

• WorldAtlas’s “Calendars Used Around the World” discusses nine different calendars around the world and briefly explains their origins.
• “A Walk Through Time - Ancient Calendars” via The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) explains the evolution of the way people have told time over the ages. The site offers several different tabs to choose from which makes for a worthy exploration of the topic.

2. Have you ever read a historical fiction novel? What are some ways authors make their stories real, and what are some ways they make their stories fiction? Discuss any historical fiction novels you’ve read previously.

Teaching Suggestion: This question helps provide an entryway into the historical fiction genre for those students who may be less familiar with it. It also supports students to start thinking about the literary characteristics of historical fiction. Some editions of this novel include an author’s note and interview where the author discusses how much of this story is based on her grandmother’s life. It might be helpful to review those materials after students have read the novel in its entirety.

• “Genre: Historical Fiction” via DearTeacherClark is a 13-minute video providing a detailed description of historical fiction with examples and discussions of literary elements such as plot, setting, and characters. (For a shorter viewing, you could show the first 4:22 of the video.)
• In this 8-minute interview with Reading Rockets, author Pam Muñoz Ryan explains her childhood as a young writer and the stories she heard about her grandmother’s “Princess life” in Mexico. The content of the interview with the author closely mirrors the interview printed at the end of some editions of Esperanza Rising.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

One of two Mexican proverbs from the epigraph of this novel states the following:

Es más rico el rico cuando empobrece que el pobre cuando enriquece.

The rich person is richer when he becomes poor than the poor person when he becomes rich.

What do you think of this quote? Does it resonate as true for you? Can you think of a moment, encounter, or story that carries this same lesson? Based on this epigraph, what do you think this novel will be about?

Teaching Suggestion: This prompt and ensuing student discussions and reflections will prepare students to engage with one of the novel’s three major themes, The True Meaning of Wealth. Students will continue to be prompted to reflect on this theme throughout their time studying this novel.