3. Mr. Hernandez loses his translation job, but he is vehemently opposed to “the Welfare.” When his wife asks him if he would let his kids starve rather than beg from the government, he turns red and doesn’t answer. Why do you think Manny’s father scorns welfare?
4. The title Parrot in the Oven comes from this reference: “Perico, or parrot, was what Dad called me sometimes. It was from a Mexican saying about a parrot that complains how hot it is in the shade, while all along he’s sitting inside an oven.” Manny explains that his father doesn’t think he’s dumb, just too quick to trust people. Why do you think Mr. Hernandez might think so? Can you find any evidence that Manny is too trusting?
5. When the police officers haul away Mr. Hernandez (after he frightens his wife), Mrs. Hernandez says angrily, “Go ahead, take him!”. Given the seriousness of what happened, why is she so excited to see him when he gets out of jail? What is the dynamic between Mr. and Mrs. Hernandez? Does one have more control over the family than the other?
6. In Chapter 5, Manny dreams about his recently deceased grandmother, Grandma Rosa. He dreams that they are walking together in the mountains, when suddenly a huge earthquake erupts, with “fire tearing open the earth.” Nardo teases Manny, telling him the dream means he will die alone. Who or what do you think this dream might be about?
7. In Chapter 9, Manny hears his father singing a Mexican ballad that either says “I want to die of love” or “I want to live with love.” How is romantic love portrayed in this novel? Think about how Manny describes Miss Van der Meer, Dorothy, and Imelda Rodriguez, and take another look at Chapter 10. Would you call Manny a romantic?
8. Manny often describes his voice as sounding like a whine, or like a girl’s voice. In Chapter 9, he sees his reflection in a glass door and sees “the reflection of a ridiculous boy, a clumsy boy.” In Chapter 11, after Eddie steals a woman’s purse, Manny says he finally recognizes who he really should be. How does Manny perceive himself compared to his friends? His family? Does he change during the course of the book? If so, how?
9. What are the relationships between white and Latino characters in this novel? What incidents of racism stand out in your mind?
10. At Grandma Rosa’s house, there is a cherry tree in her garden that is not just a cherry tree, but has grafted limbs bearing different fruits. In Chapter 5, she remembers Manny’s mother as a small girl swinging at a piñata beneath this same tree. What do Grandma Rosa’s garden and cherry tree mean to Manny?
Questions for Victor Martinez
1. Are you Manny Hernandez? How does Manny’s childhood compare—and contrast—to your own in Fresno, California?
No, I am not Manny Hernandez, yet our lives were similar. Excluding those parts that are fiction, we both lived in projects, worked as farmworkers, and we both got soaked whenever we stuck our heads out in the rain. Most of the time, however, we held our umbrellas up.
2. In Chapter 7, Manny observes, “Except for Albert, the guys I hung with thought that if they even flicked through the pages of a book, ink would rub off on their hands and mark them sissies for life.” Were you a reader when you were a child? If so, what did you like to read? Were you considered a sissy?
I enjoyed reading when I was a boy. I liked adventure stories, like The Vikings, Mysterious Island, Robinson Crusoe, and Treasure Island. Since none of my friends enjoyed reading at all, in a way I was considered somewhat of a sissy; however, no one dared tell me that to my face. Reading for me involved being pleasurably alone, having my own space, and listening to not only my own thoughts, but those of others. If this made me nerdy, so be it.
3. Did you really have a teacher who gave you twenty dollars to further your education? (If so, did your father really take it away?) Did teachers play a big role in your life? If so, how?
No, but when I was in seventh grade, I had a school principal who gave me lunch money whenever I needed it. The school nurse sent me to him because I used to complain of stomachaches. He was a good man, and at the time—which wasn’t long, really—our family had little to eat at home. Of course, my father would not have appreciated the school principal’s generosity if I had told him, so I never did. Somehow, this experience got worked into Parrot.
Teachers played a huge role in my life. They represented to me, even as a child, what is possible through learning. This may sound strange, but to me, teachers were “rich”; they wore better clothes, drove newer cars, and were more knowledgeable than anyone in my neighborhood. They had access to a world that I believed was shut off to a person like me. I hung around school just long enough to prove myself wrong.
4. Did you have any major role models? Did anyone in particular encourage you to be a writer?
I had many role models, especially in my family. They taught me how not to hold my hands at my side just because my pockets are empty. You’d be surprised how many unlocked doors lay just beyond one’s fingertips. Take my grandfather, for example. He loved to read, and though he worked long hours at a compress factory, he would stay up late into the night carefully studying whatever book he had available. He showed me that language is not only a pleasure, but a craft on which thought travels. By reading, you jump onto it and go on a journey.
As far as encouraging me, a poet by the name of Philip Levine told me tales about all the places I’d encounter and people I’d meet if I became a writer. Even today, I still behold wonders he mentioned, and say, “You were right, Phil. That’s a marvel.”
5. As a Mexican American in Fresno, did you experience the racial tensions that Manny did when growing up?
Race, class, and cultural tension are behind every impulse in America. Our recognition of this, and our struggle to alleviate it, is what truly makes our country and people distinctively great.
6. Have you ever felt like a parrot in an oven?
Yes, I have felt like a parrot in an oven, and I believe I am not alone. Most people feel at one time in their life that circumstances beyond their control limit what they can do. For example: I was born of Mexican descent, and I was born in a poor family. Because Mexican culture and poor families are often treated as second-class citizens, a person born under these circumstances may be denied access to many opportunities. They are being locked out. However, when that person accepts those restrictions as a condition of their life, then they are, in effect, locking themselves out.
7. How and when did you decide to write this book?
Although it’s starting to change a little, there’s never really been a big love for poetry in America, which is what I wrote for many years, so I decided to write a book about when I was a boy, a book young people of all ages would not only enjoy reading, but feel that what it is to be young and bewildered is a time worth remembering.
8. How has your own family reacted to Parrot in the Oven?
My family, to this day, are pretty much amazed that after so many years of going nowhere with my writing, I finally wrote a book that won awards and that people appear to enjoy reading.
9. Your writing is jam-packed with similes and metaphors, such as “Without work, I was empty as a Coke bottle” or “Dad had about as much patience as you could prop on a toothpick”. When were you bitten by the metaphorical bug? Is figurative language a major component in all of your work?
I am of the William Carlos Williams school that says, “There are no ideas but in things.” I agree with this statement simply because it confirms the language I have been listening to all my life. Growing up in a large family, I spoke an English (and Spanish) that was very “thing” oriented. If anyone in my family wanted to express a thought or emotion, they often used an image, metaphor, or simile. I believe this is also true in the South, and that’s why there are so many good writers that come from there. In terms of Parrot, I imagined that the best way to express Manny’s inner emotions and thinking processes would be to use poetry. Abstract language and pop cultural influences, of which there are few in the novel, don’t really seem accurate ways of getting inside a
young teenager’s true emotional world. Besides, poetry is what I’m most familiar with, so it seemed logical to use it in fiction.
10. How did it feel to receive the National Book Award in 1996 and the Pura Belpré Award in 1998? Did those awards change your writing career or your writing goals?
I was stunned when Parrot was nominated for the National Book Award, and I truly felt that nomination was as far as that oversight would go. After all, I thought, I’m Chicano American, and I wrote a novel about poor people. Who cares about these things in literature? When Parrot actually won the award it was like everything I had ever believed about such processes had been pulled out from under me. In fact, so much had my ideas been reduced to rubble, I stumbled over them climbing onto the stage.
Of course I felt happy about winning such prestigious awards. Most people would, I believe. But then later, another feeling slowly set in, or rather loss of a feeling. I had been writing for so many years with little money and no recognition that I had gotten, in a strange sense, accustomed to feeling neglected. Neglect was a huge gorilla that had grown to adulthood on my back, sharing my misery, my bitterness of nonrecognition, my anger at being broke. Suddenly, with no warning, he jumped off my back. Of course I was relieved, at first, that I no longer had to carry his great bulk, but I was also unsettled by his departure. We had become good friends over the years, he and I, sharing our sufferings, counting our pennies, and now, suddenly, he was gone, leaving me alone with my impressive National Book Award—which, by the way, is a dangerous-looking glass shard that will impale me if I happen to fall on it.
As far as changing my writing career, not a whole lot has changed. I am still staggeringly unknown to most readers in America.
As for my writing goals, they have become more quietly ambitious. I’m more settled in the desire to write only what I want to write, which doesn’t come close to matching anything editors and publishers far and wide consider worth writing about. Nevertheless, I don’t feel compelled to shout on every stage how utterly wrong they are.
What has changed for the better for me are the letters I receive from young people who say they enjoy my novel. Before, with the exception of one, I never received any letters addressed to me as a writer. The one I did came from my mother. It said, “If you quit now, no one will ever know the difference.” The gorilla got a big kick out of that one.
About the Author
Victor Martinez was born and raised in Fresno, California, the fourth in a family of twelve children. He attended California State University at Fresno and Stanford University, and has worked as a field laborer, welder, truck driver, firefighter, teacher, and office clerk. His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies.
Mr. Martinez was awarded the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for PARROT IN THE OVEN, his first novel.
Credits
Cover photo © 1998 by Theo Westenberger/Graphistock
Cover design by C. Stengel
Cover © 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
Rayo is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
Parrot in the Oven
mi vida
Copyright © 1996 by Victor Martinez
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Martinez, Victor.
Parrot in the oven : mi vida / a novel by Victor Martinez.
p. cm.
“Joanna Cotler books.”
Summary: Manny relates his coming of age experiences as a member of a poor Mexican family in which the alcoholic father only adds to everyone’s struggle.
ISBN 0-06-026704-6. — ISBN 0-06-026706-2 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN 0-06-447186-1 (pbk.)
[1. Family life—Fiction. 2. Alcoholism—Fiction. 3. Mexican Americans—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M36718Par 1996 96-2119
[Fic]—dc20 CIP
AC
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EPub Edition © MARCH 2013 ISBN: 9780062290571
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