2007 Summer Reading Program - Library Resources |
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Introduction to the Book Selected Resources |
Introduction to the Book
From Time.com (August 26, 2006)
Migrants from Mexico and Latin America are transforming the American south. In his new book A Home on the Field, TIME reporter Paul Cuadros chronicles one town's decision to start up a soccer team in its increasingly Hispanic public school — and how that team struggled not only to win acceptance among the Anglo establishment but also on a playing field dominated by white soccer organizations who looked at them as interlopers. The story is a deeply personal one. Cuadros himself helped to found and coached the team, taking a bunch of young street footballers from Jordan-Matthews High School in Siler City, North Carolina, through triumphs and defeats to come in reach of a state championship.
An excerpt from the book:
The second day of practice saw only sixteen players arrive. Several had not been eligible to play on the team and had dropped out. Others had found the first practice too hard, too uncomfortably hot in the sun, and stayed home. Others didn't like the regimental form of practice and only wanted to play cascarita [free-for-all street soccer]. Many couldn't come because they worked after school.
Work was very important to these kids. Most had jobs or were looking for them. Work defined who they were. If you had a job, you were somebody, you were not lazy. For these Latino families, work was so important it took a backseat to almost everything in the family. It didn't matter what kind of work you were doing as long as you were working and making money. Some Latino kids had no choice, they had to find a job to help pay the bills at home. Latino families expected their children to help pay for the household expenses once they got older. Many families rationalized that if their children were in Mexico and were sixteen, they would already have been done with school and out there working. Some took jobs in home construction, fast-food restaurants, garages, whatever could be found. Some even worked at the chicken plant on second shift at night, using false IDs because they were under eighteen. (more...)
Reviews of A Home on the Field
"A HOME ON THE FIELD: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America." Kirkus. July 15, 2006, v.74(14), p. 708-709.
The small-town American immigrant experience, as told by a Peruvian author who coached a high-school soccer team comprised of impoverished Latino students.
Time magazine contributor Cuadros spent a decade moving between big cities before finally settling in tiny Siler City, N.C. Here, the author begins by mapping out how he ended up in Siler City, explaining his yearning to write about the Latino immigrant life there and, by extension, throughout the country, and illustrating how this broad subject matter was whittled down to a telling chronicle of the triumphant rise of a local soccer team. Cuadros carefully relates the history of the town, but the bulk of his text concerns his job as a soccer coach in an area where the sport is popular, yet played, thanks to prohibitive cost, almost exclusively by white kids. He made some contacts at Jordan-Matthews High School and set about introducing a soccer program into their curriculum. He then moves on to chart the success of the program and the team of Latino players he eventually coaxed onto the field, while also illustrating the various pitfalls the players faced. From their lack of eligibility, to scenes of family tragedy, nothing is painted more vividly than Cuadros's confiscating of a firearm that star player Enrique carried around to protect his mother, who had been robbed at gunpoint. The team would soon rise to success, and the author's description of their victories is nicely balanced with a broad overview of Latinos' relatively recent migration to the American South, with a conclusion infused with cautious optimism.
A worthy social commentary and biographical portrait that ends neatly with a list of each player's post-high-school achievements.
"A Home on the Field: How One Championship Team Inspires Hope for the Revival of Small Town America." Publishers Weekly. July 31, 2006, v. 253(30), p. 73.
Cuadros, an investigative reporter of Peruvian descent, set out to write a book on the "Latino Diaspora" in the southeast but decided to tell the story through the Mexican high school soccer players of Siler City, N.C.--whose team Cuadros himself lobbied for against the resistance and overt prejudice within this old-boy "football town." The players' thwarted ambition and punitive social hurdles encapsulate the plight of Latino immigrants who flock to rural hamlets seeking better lives and steady work but run up against palpable fear and suspicion in towns that still faintly reek of Jim Crow hostility. The Slier City team's struggles bring the town conflicts into sharp relief and give Cuadros a sturdy framework for exploring meaty issues of class and ethnic conflict. In alternating terse and tender prose, he delves into his players' backstories and captures their buoyant camaraderie to shape an inspiring underdog's tale without romanticizing the team's painful immigrant realities, such as their parents' shaky health insurance and high school drop-out rates. This feel-good read coincides neatly with the start of a new school year, staking its faith on fresh starts.
About the Author
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Paul Cuadros |
The book by award-winning investigative reporter Paul Cuadros follows the lives of members of a Latino soccer team in Siler City. As the young students struggle to achieve academic and athletic success, the town must contend with its attitudes and perceptions of Latino immigrants. Cuadros coached the team, which won North Carolina’s state soccer championship in 2004.
Cuadros has written about issues of race and poverty for more than 15 years. He worked for The Chicago Reporter, where he won several awards for his reporting on housing, health care for the poor, and immigration issues. While working for the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C., he helped write the books “The Buying of the Congress” and “The Cheating of America, How the Rich Cheat on their Taxes.” ( more... )
A home on the field : how one championship team inspires hope for the revival of small town America / Paul Cuadros. New York : Rayo, c2006
ASU Main Stacks GV944.U6 C83 2006
A role model for baby brother. By Paul Cuadros and Maggie Sieger. Time.com. December 29, 2003
"Specialist Christopher Grimes, 25, has a favorite story about his big sister Billie, now a medic stationed in Iraq."
Hispanic poultry workers live in new southern slums by Paul Cuadros. ADF Reporter, 2001, v. 20(1).
"Everyone in Siler City, NC, knows about North Chatham Avenue. They know the street the way one knows a dark secret. Both whites and blacks shake their heads at its mention. Even though the town feels shame about the dilapidated homes that line North Chatham, little has been done. It is accepted like an illegal dump. Nobody likes to see it, but who is going to clean it up? North Chatham Avenue is neglected despite the black eye it gives the town — once the model for The Andy Griffith Show — because it is now home to a growing community of Hispanic immigrant poultry workers."
The new tactics of immigration enforcement by Paul Cuadros. Time.com. August 7, 2006.
"On July 25 when immigration agents descended on Garcia Labor Company Inc., a temporary service company that provides workers to sort freight for ABX Air, it put on notice contractors that knowingly hire unauthorized immigrants for larger companies."
When David Duke goes marching in by Paul Cuadros. Salon.com. April 4, 2000.
"Siler City, N.C., was uneasy about an influx of Latinos, but when the former Klansman joined the fighting, some began to worry about the price of hate."
Selected Library Resources (Search Databases and Articles for articles and the Library Catalog for books)
Full Text Articles
Homeland Security, Militarism, and the Future of Latinos and Latinas in the United States by Jorge Mariscal. Radical History Review. Fall, 2005, issue 93. p. 39-52. (Retrieved from Academic Search Premier, a library database)
Discusses the effects of economic developments on the Latin American communities in the U.S. in 2005. Increase in the population of Latin American immigrants between 1990 and 2000 in North Carolina; Promotion of the Propositions 187 action program initiatives of former California governor Pete Wilson; Organization of a union for immigrant workers.
Outcasts United by Warren St. John. The New York Times. Jan. 21, 2007. (Retrieved from the New York Times, a library database)
"Early last summer the mayor of this small town east of Atlanta issued a decree: no more soccer in the town park.
''There will be nothing but baseball and football down there as long as I am mayor,'' Lee Swaney, a retired owner of a heating and air-conditioning business, told the local paper. ''Those fields weren't made for soccer.''
A small team brings moral victory to a divided town by Patrik Jonsson. Christian Science Monitor. Nov. 23, 2004. (Retrieved from Proquest Newspapers, a library database)
"The Jordan-Matthews High School Jets of Siler City turn heads, too: Mexican boys who tumbled out of white vans on Saturday, arriving at the small-school Class 1-A championship to face the Devil Pups. Their own bus had broken down on the way to the game, discomfiting the boys until coach Paul Cuadros spoke up..."
We Are At A Crossroads by by John W. Mallard Jr. Vital Speeches of the Day. June 1, 2002. v. 68(16). (Retrieved from Academic Search Premier, a library database)
Presents a speech by John W. Mallard Jr., president of the Cardinal State Bank, delivered in Greensboro, North Carolina on March 25, 2002. The banking industry and the Hispanic community; Bilingual services; Influence of Hispanic workers on the local economy; Consumer confidence in the wake of September 11; Community banking and Hispanics.
Latino folklore and culture: stories of family, traditions of pride / by Ellyn Sanna. Philadelphia : Mason Crest Publishers, c2006
ASU IMC Stacks 398.08968 S228la
Latinos in the new South: transformations of place / edited by Heather A. Smith and Owen J. Furuseth Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2006
F220.S75 L37 2006 (Available soon)
New destinations: Mexican immigration in the United States / Víctor Zúñiga and Rubén Hernández-León, editors
New York : Russell Sage Foundation, c2005
ASU Main Stacks E184.M5 N36 2005
The Oxford encyclopedia of Latinos and Latinas in the United States / Suzanne Oboler and Deena J. González, editors in chief. New York : Oxford University Press, 2005
ASU Reference E184.S75 O97 2005
Gregory's girl [videorecording] / the Samuel Goldwyn Company presents a Bill Forsyth Film ; Samuel Goldwyn Home Entertainment. New York : Distributed by HBO Home Video, [1994]
ASU Movies VC 10156
Nuestra comunidad [videorecording]: Latinos in North Carolina / produced and directed by Joanne Hershfield and Penny Simpson. [North Carolina]: New South Productions , c2001
ASU Movies VC 11625
Problems & solutions for the high school soccer coach [videorecording]: The Science of Coaching. [S.l.] : The Science of Coaching, 1994
ASU Movies VC 11304
A Home on the Field
http://www.ahomeonthefield.com/
Latinos in the Southern Appalachians
http://www.library.appstate.edu/appcoll/research_aids/rpfleger.html
North Carolina High School Athletic Association
http://www.nchsaa.org/index.pl
North Carolina Latino Coalition
http://nclatinocoalition.org/
Page created by Reference Librarians for the Appalachian State Summer Reading Program