Mexican-American Relations and T.C. Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain"

Simon Brandl

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Examination Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of ...

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Examination Thesis from the year 2015 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,3, University of Marburg, language: English, abstract: The main goal of this paper is to address the question if there is any type of socio-historical narrative surrounding the state of Mexicans in the United States that might have developed from the very beginnings of Mexican-American relations up to contemporary US society and, further, might find its expression in contemporary American literature, using the example of "The Tortilla Curtain". While the main approach of this paper will be of sociological nature, one cannot forgo an examination of the respective political background and events, which mostly go hand in hand and show interdependencies. Notably, related research on this field is relatively scarce. Most major works dealing with Mexican-American relations and the state of Mexicans within US society focus on specific time periods or address specific contemporary socioeconomic issues of immigration and immigrants, but rather lack a comprehensive view that might combine the different strands and lead to a widely spanning narrative about Mexican immigrants in US society. In general, I will try to develop a narrative that follows the overall course of events in Mexican-American history, which chapter two will comprise. Here, I will specifically depict the Mexican-American War as an origin of the boundaries we know today and will further provide an in-depth study on the 20th century and its waves of migration. Chapter three will look at the specific history of Mexican immigration to the United States and will then provide an overview of the contemporary situation of immigrants. Subsequently, chapter four aims to merge the findings of chapters two and three and examine contemporary literary expressions in Boyle's "The Tortilla Curtain". Out of the many aspects to be found within the novel, I will mainly focus on those relevant in sociological terms. Lastly, I will try to combine the paper's findings to a potential narrative and discuss the political and sociological future of Mexican-American relations.