Their Blood Is Strong By Gregory Napa

Throughout history, there has been a trend where populations affected by hardship at home have no choice but to leave in search for a better place. In Their Blood is Strong, an essay about the migrant people in the Great Depression, John Steinbeck describes the struggle of starvation in the plentiful garden of California. In another work by Steinbeck, his novel The Grapes of Wrath, he tells the story of the Joads, a family who must leave their farm in Oklahoma in search of work in California during the Great Depression. The Joads start out optimistic about the life they can have in California, but find a grim situation upon arriving. Similarly, Gregory Nava’s movie El Norte follows two Guatemalan siblings, Rosa and Enrique, who flee their home to go to America, but the life they find in the United States isn’t as easy or
In an economic garden of abundance and opportunity, ironically, the systems in place cause many people to struggle to get by.
Initially, the families have high hopes for the way their new lives will be. The Joads decide to go to California because they hear from solicited pamphlets that there is a need for plenty of labor picking fruit in the bountiful orchards. Ma Joad dwells on her dream of being settled in a nice little house that is characteristic of the area. She says, “But I like to think how nice it’s gonna be, maybe, in California. . . . I wonder--that is, if we all get jobs an’ all work--maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An’ the little fellas go out an’ pick oranges right off the tree” (Steinbeck 91). They think they will easily find well-paying jobs because of the pamphlets they