Parrot In The Oven-mi vida(pg 1- 48)

Summary:This novel Parrot in The Oven by Victor Martinez starts off with a young Hispanic boy named Manuel Hernandez talking about how many jobs his older brother Bernardo had, had that summer. But because his brother did not have a job his parents and everyone else just like in any other family would, encouraged him to keep trying. But unlike some families Manuel's family is very poor along with many other Hispanic families that live around them. One day Manuel wants to buy himself a baseball glove that he has wanted for a really long time so he asks his older brother Bernardo to go with him to the pepper field to pick peppers to get a little money. That way he could get his glove and Bernardo could get what he wanted. When they were picking peppers they noticed all of the immigrants there. After this Manuel's father is introduced and he spends all his money at a pool hall with all his friends. He and Manuel's mom talk about his father getting put on welfare and all of a sudden its this big deal. But that being the last option for them because no one really had a job that could support all of them in the house hold Manuel's mom tried to talk his dad into it. Even though all the neighbors would talk.

Quote:" He believed people were like money. If you were a million dollar person, you had a grip on things, a big house maybe,a crowd of suckers you could push around. You could be a thousand dollar person or a hundred dollar person- even a ten- five, or one dollar person. Below that, everybody was just nickels and dimes. To my dad we were pennies."(Martinez 26)

Reaction: This quote is basically saying that Manuel's father things that they are as poor as a person or family can get. He is saying that his family is no more than a couple of pennies, worth nothing to other people.