Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child by Elva Trevino Hart

genre: non-fiction, memoir

As the youngest of six children, Elva's life experience was shaped by the dynamics of her family and the way that her father chose to help them improve their circumstances.  While she was a little girl, their family would travel from their home in Texas up north to work as migrant farmers.  Feeling lesser in so many ways: female, Mexican, poor, Elva soon learns where she should look for approval and its not at home!

Rather than a cohesive narrative, Barefoot Heart is more a collection of essays and memories about Elva's childhood and adolescence.  Sometimes poignant, sometimes a bit repetitive, she details a world so different than the one my mother grew up in, although they would've been children at the same time.  Many images from this story are very vivid in my mind: of the home where they lived while working the farms, their first home of their own, little Elva in the fields.  Each member of the family is described well enough that I could keep everyone straight.  I liked the first 2/3 of the book a little better than the final 1/3, I'm not sure why, maybe the very ending felt super rushed to me.  However, I did appreciate how she took some time to detail all the processing and effort it took to make peace with her childhood experiences. 

It's not so amazing that everyone would enjoy it but I'm glad I tried it.