Page 172 - The Language of Composition 4e Teacher Edition Sample.indd

became a focal point for the city’s immigrant- nothing about the craft. Now he operates a
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rights movement. . . . small remodeling business. We stood on the
back deck of his new home, and looked out at
METRO ATLANTA the small patch of Georgia forest that belongs
Identity
11% HISPANIC to him; the sense of personal achievement was
BIDEN 57%, TRUMP 42% palpable. He is a fit man in his fifties who works
with his hands but has a deep hunger for intel-
. . . [F]inally, I reached the urban sprawl of lectual conversation; and he is, as we say in
Atlanta, stopping in a ranchlike suburb of curv- Spanish, un hombre realizado. A man of
Copyright (c) 2023 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Uncorrected proofs have been used for this sample chapter.
ing roads and thin pine trees. A Mexican immi- achievement.
grant named Gustavo had recently purchased a This is the time-honored trajectory of immi-
home there, his own little piece of the South.
(Gustavo also happened to be undocumented, grant success, but Gustavo wakes up every day
which is why I’m using only his first name.) with the knowledge that a mere traffic stop could
Gustavo told me his friends had warned get him deported. When his father took ill,
him that the subdivision would be filled with Gustavo couldn’t risk crossing the border to
Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Strictly for use with its products. Not for redistribution.
see him before he died. He hasn’t seen any rela-
white people who hated Mexicans. But his tives in Mexico since he left twenty years ago.
new neighbors have given him a friendly “I believe in God, and I always place myself in
Southern welcome. “I’ve accomplished a lot,
considering the closed doors I had,” he told his hands,” Gustavo said. “Whenever I leave my
DIFFERENTIATION me in Spanish. In Mexico, Gustavo was unable house, I don’t know what might happen. If one
day my status counts against me, so be it. I can’t
to pursue an education past high school. He
Collaborative Learning brought his family to Georgia twenty years trust in men, or in politics.”
Republican and Democratic administrations
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AP Teaching Tip. Tobar identifies tensions ago, when it was an exotic new frontier for have come and gone, Gustavo told me, yet his
in political perspectives in paragraph 27. Latino immigrants. situation has remained the same. “When Obama
“Here as elsewhere on my journey, U.S. I visited Georgia as a reporter around the was in office was when the deportations here
politics look different when seen from the same time Gustavo arrived there. New Latino were the worst,” he said. During the first three
perspective of working-class people,” he communities were popping up then across the years of the Trump Administration, construction
states, and Gustavo’s business benefits heartland; the barrios of Los Angeles and other was booming, and so was Gustavo’s business —
during the Trump administration but his cities in the Southwest had become crowded, he was able to buy his home. Here as elsewhere
family benefits from Obama’s DACA policy. and the meatpacking and manufacturing plants on my journey, U.S. politics look different when
You could ask students in small groups to of the South and Midwest were beginning to hire seen from the perspective of working-class
discuss how those tensions add to the large numbers of immigrant workers. In the people. But Obama did create DACA, which
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complexity of Tobar’s claims about Latino early Aughts, I wrote about the founding of a allowed his eldest child to go to Harvard, and
identity, noting that “tensions” is one of the Spanish-language radio station in Liberal, Gustavo is grateful for that. Gustavo’s two
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defining characteristics of the AP Lan- Kansas, and of a Spanish-language newspaper younger children, a nineteen-year-old son and
guage scoring rubric for the Row C Sophis- in Dalton, Georgia. I have a distinct memory of eleven-year-old daughter, are both U.S. citizens.
tication point. Gustavo’s story as an driving through Dalton and seeing a pickup In November, Gustavo tells me with pride, his
undocumented person is full of tensions. truck rolling through the center of town with a son went to vote.
Students might identify others, in addition large Mexican flag flying in the back.
to the political ones, within his story and When he arrived in Atlanta, Gustavo started 25
discuss their effect on Tobar’s purpose. by taking jobs in construction, despite knowing
7 Acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, a U.S. immigration
policy enacted in 2012 that allows some immigrants who arrived in
the United States as children to receive a two-year extension of their
6 The aughts is a term for the time period of 2000–2009. — Eds. residency in the United States along with eligibility for work permits. — Eds.
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