Color: Latino Voices in the Pacific Northwest

By Lorane West

Latino Voices in the Pacific Northwest offers a fresh, unique, glimpse into the rarely seen world of the recent immigrant. It also provides some insights into the modern healthcare delivery system and other matters of cultural interest.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.43 x 9.00 x 5.44
• Publisher: Washington State University; (May 1, 2004)
• ISBN: 0874222745

Book Description

Without claiming to speak directly on anyone's behalf, "Color: Latino Voices in the Pacific Northwest" presents a tapestry of poignant conversations with people from various Central and South American countries and backgrounds; dialogue they could not communicate on their own.

The majority of these new arrivals in the United States can neither read nor speak English. Few are educated; some struggle to sign their own name. Their professions range from attorney to school bus driver. Some embrace the new culture; others merely tolerate it. The author's single page vignettes depict their hopes, dreams, and life experiences—from the ordinary to the overwhelmingly difficult—and offer a fresh, unique look into their seldom seen world. In "Color," a young man who wants to be an auto mechanic cannot understand why he is required to take Psychology 101 at the local community college. "Tell me they're not doing it just to cheat the students out of even more money."

A mother recounts how as a little girl, she swept a dirt floor, cooked over a wood fire, and washed clothes in a muddy river. Now, keeping her apartment clean is one of her most enjoyable activities. A laborer is unable to comprehend the poor work ethic of his fellow employees. "Minimum wage is more per hour than I would make at home by a long shot. So I work as hard as I can…but my citizen coworkers are always complaining. They even tell me not to work so hard because I make them look bad!" A father speaks of the intense hunger he felt as a child and his profound joy when he realized that his young son had the luxury of turning down food. Another family endured the opposite. "We never got ahead. The jobs kept drying up on us…we had to pay $800.00! a month to live in an unheated basement with just two mattresses to share for the five of us…Life has been horrible here…I would like to write a book and tell my people, don't come. It isn't like the movies. Don't come."

Whether about love, work, play, finances, or family, these accounts illuminate cultural differences in attitudes, rights, and values, and pose intriguing questions about the effects of prosperity and how welcoming this country actually is. Author Lorane A. West paints a very real picture of life for many new immigrants to the United States, and through her portraits, gives Americans a glimpse of themselves that may both surprise and challenge.

About the Author

Lorane West has been immersed in immigrant communities for her entire life. Her father and grandparents arrived in the United States from Finland, unable to speak English. She has spent the last twenty years with her Salvadoran husband, and speaks both English and Spanish at home.

Although now settled in the United States, the author has lived in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Flying to both countries with money in the bank and a college education, she was able to obtain legal residence status fairly easily. Even so, as a recent arrival, she felt deep loneliness and numbing isolation.

Yet West had it easy. Unlike the people she assists in her work as a medical interpreter, she did not endure walking to another country under cover of night, led by a man to whom she paid six months wages in cash, who might leave her lost along the way. She did not travel two thousand miles from home to get a minimum wage job, only able to provide her children with food and shelter by leaving them behind. She did not wait years to reunite with her husband, who worked in another country and sent her money, only to discover that he had started a new family during his lonely exile. She was not forced to give up her own dreams in order to keep younger siblings in school. But her clients have suffered through these ordeals and much more in their travels. West wrote her first book out of love, gratitude, respect, and admiration for Spanish-speaking immigrants living and working in the Pacific Northwest.