Book Review (Rucksack): The Tortilla Curtain

The Tortilla Curtain

Written by T.C. Boyle in 1995

The Raccoon: The Tortilla Curtain shows the hardships of immigration and racism in America through the eyes of suburban writer Delaney Mossbacher and Mexican immigrant Cándido Rincón.

UNMASKED: I don’t believe that happy endings are necessary; in life, sometimes our greatest efforts don’t result in success.  However, I believe in spiritual justice: suffering must mean something.  The character who has suffered needs to experience triumph or closure, such as knowing that someone else will be spared now that they have been oppressed.  Even in reality, humanity has risen above even the harshest atrocities to bring something positive to the world.  While victims of the American slave trade and the Holocaust were powerless to escape at the time, their faith and the willpower of the survivors led to the creation of organizations determined to protect human rights.

When the Africans were forcibly removed from their families and planted into a new country where they were treated as animals, they did not surrender.  When the Jews had entire countries turn on them and slaughter them hundreds at a time, they did not surrender.  Yet, when Delaney’s car was stolen, he surrendered.  When the labor exchange closed, Cándido surrendered.

This is why I can’t endorse the Tortilla Curtain.  Boyle’s writing style was descriptive enough to give me clear images of various characters and locations that I still remember as clearly as if I had seen them, and the relationships between his characters are disturbingly real.  Nonetheless, it is impossible to empathize with any of it.  By the time I reached the last page, in which a character finally has a change of heart, it wasn’t believable, for the characters had already gone too far over the edge too long ago.

The story in Tortilla Curtain leaves a lot to be desired as well.  The plot is a downward spiral of the lives of Delaney’s and Cándido’s families, each of them experiencing one hardship after another, and each one bringing their stories closer together, until at the bottom point, everyone is screwed over together.

This method has worked in other books, where the spiral culminates about three quarters of the way through the book, and the newly united characters work together to bring down the force that had oppressed them.  However, Tortilla Curtain ends at rock bottom, and, as the tides of the American and Mexican families spin closer and closer together, it only breeds more animosity.

Strong Points:

• The Tortilla Curtain is realistic and provides insight into people’s instinctive reactions when faced with prejudice and obstacles of varying degrees of difficulty.

Weak Points:

• This book is very specific to late 20th century/early 21st century Southern California, and it is hard to relate to many aspects of the story without living there.
• By the end of the novel, I hated everyone except the minor character Dominick Flood, and even he was a criminal.  Racism clouds the minds of every character until their decisions are impossible to respect.  Understandably, this was likely intentional, but it made for a very difficult read.
• The Tortilla Curtain is a series of unfortunate events, with no recoveries or respites to counterbalance them.

Rating: 11/20 feet of fencing

Ideal Setting: Read this when you’re having a bad day to remind yourself that it could be MUCH worse.