The Children of Sanchez: Autobiography of a Mexican Family

Rating:
Summary: What a Book!
Review: I haven't found a bopok so compelling years! What's fascinating is each of the protagonists have a decisive moment when they could have changed their lives and yet they fall back on their old ways.As sad as the story is, it's incredibly moving and in odd moments, uplifting. If ever there was a case to end the CUlture of Poverty, this is it.

Rating:
Summary: Hardcore realism
Review: It is never clear to what extent Oscar Lewis relies upon his fieldwork and to what extent he relies upon his imagination in this story about an impoverished Mexican family. Lewis certainly has an ax to grind and a theory to prove--that there is a "cycle of poverty" that entraps the poor in their own cultural malaise. This theory, popular in the 50s and still popular in its neo-liberal version today, is ill served by Lewis's fictionalized accounts that are disguised as fact. How did Lewis know this family so well? The answer is he probably didn't, but made up what he lacked in data so that his theory would come out on top. In this story it becomes tragically clear that the decisions of the individuals themselves are what are holding them back. From Lewis's liberal point of view, the failures are understandable but lamentable. The problem is, as I note above, it is really just a story. The family certainly did exist, and people in the neighborhood (Tepito) can point their house out to the curious stranger, but the details are all Oscar Lewises. The proof of the pudding is that Tepito is now a vibrant urban center despite its apparent poverty, and the likelihood is that it was always so--but Lewis couldn't see the forest for the theory.

Needless to say the neighborhood and the family felt ill-used when they discovered the use to which Lewis put his time with them (to say nothing of the ethnical dilemna of the fact that he was writing very salacious material about them when everyone around them knew who they were.

This book certainly makes interesting literature, but the reader should be aware of the author's profound biases. It also makes an interesting example for anthropologists--of how NOT to do research and how NOT to abuse your subjects.

Rating:
Summary: Recommended reading, but with great caution
Review: It is never clear to what extent Oscar Lewis relies upon his fieldwork and to what extent he relies upon his imagination in this story about an impoverished Mexican family. Lewis certainly has an ax to grind and a theory to prove--that there is a "cycle of poverty" that entraps the poor in their own cultural malaise. This theory, popular in the 50s and still popular in its neo-liberal version today, is ill served by Lewis's fictionalized accounts that are disguised as fact. How did Lewis know this family so well? The answer is he probably didn't, but made up what he lacked in data so that his theory would come out on top. In this story it becomes tragically clear that the decisions of the individuals themselves are what are holding them back. From Lewis's liberal point of view, the failures are understandable but lamentable. The problem is, as I note above, it is really just a story. The family certainly did exist, and people in the neighborhood (Tepito) can point their house out to the curious stranger, but the details are all Oscar Lewises. The proof of the pudding is that Tepito is now a vibrant urban center despite its apparent poverty, and the likelihood is that it was always so--but Lewis couldn't see the forest for the theory.

Needless to say the neighborhood and the family felt ill-used when they discovered the use to which Lewis put his time with them (to say nothing of the ethnical dilemna of the fact that he was writing very salacious material about them when everyone around them knew who they were.

This book certainly makes interesting literature, but the reader should be aware of the author's profound biases. It also makes an interesting example for anthropologists--of how NOT to do research and how NOT to abuse your subjects.

Rating:
Summary: Hardcore realism
Review: This book certainly lacks scientific data and all the other scholarly details usually found in an anthropological study. But there's nothing scientific about poverty. Footnotes and graphs have no place in this kind of examination. It's an emotional book, intimately conveying the scorn and contempt of family that's half-starved and forced to live in claustrophobic conditions.

"The Children of Sanchez" documents all the petty hostilities within the fragile family unit. And it documents them accurately. Living in Mexico City is hard. Rich or poor, chilangos are constantly forced to deal with incredible violence and instability; the city is unforgiving and cruel, with terrible pollution levels and wild corruption. Lewis has perfectly captured the daily horrors of this urbanized mess. Using the Sanchez family as a case group representative of many families in the capital, he shows how people are slowly crushed by their relatives, the justice system and the congestion.

Nothing in this book is false or misleading. I have lived and worked in Mexico City; I have lived with a middle-class Mexican family; and I have started a family in Mexico. The experiences of the Sanchez family mirror my own experiences. I have met and have known many people like the people in this book. I have seen my own family spend countless hours attacking each other. And I have seen people desperately trying to make ends meet in a city with no opportunities.

Read this book. It's all true!

Rating:
Summary: An unbiased approach to anthropology
Review: This book for me is one of the most unbiased approaches to anthropogy I have ever read. It shocked me that he chose to take their interviews and turn them into stories using their own language. It is as if the people were talking to the reader. The conflicts are so real and believable that I do not think that Oscar Lewis allowed his own thoughts to even be part of his work. This is not a liberals approach to changing peoples positions on an issue. It is allowing people to see what it was like to be a struggling lower class family in the 1950s.

We a given a window into a family of 4 children and their struggles from early childhood to becoming adults. We also are given a small snipet of the Father's perspective of his childrens accomplishments.

This family's life is definately not the most glamorous look into their lives but it is very honest. We get to see them go through the struggles of poverty and being parents in a country that the only way to survive was to overcome the struggles that were given to them.

I disagree with anyone who thinks Lewis is some how trying to make us simpathize with this Family. I feel he is trying to let us discover the Sanchez family for who they are and what is important to them. I have made a point to read more of his work and I have found only an honest acessment of people and the conditions they live in.

Be warned this book tells the story through a Mexican perspective and their morals do follow western views so tightly. The content that is discussed is hard and should be read with maturity.