‘Estamos tristes’ to read Cajas de Cartón

Cajas de Cartón means “boxes of cardboard.” Although Jiménez started out as a very poor cotton picker, he is now the chairman of Modern Languages and Literature at Santa Clara University in California. He has written three other novels, and two of them are companions to Cajas de Cartón. Photo courtesy of Emily Tyler.
Cajas de Cartón means “boxes of cardboard.” Although Francisco Jiménez started out as a very poor cotton picker, he is now the chairman of Modern Languages and Literature at Santa Clara University in California. He has written three other novels, and two of them are companions to Cajas de Cartón. Photo courtesy of Emily Tyler.

In order to become accustomed to reading and understanding another language, Spanish Intermediate three classes are required to read a novel completely in Spanish.

Cajas de Cartón by Francisco Jiménez is an autobiography describing the life of a young illegal immigrant.

“While reading, you can see the proper sentence structure,” said Emily Hartwig, 9. Spanish is a hard language to master in terms of the structure because it is considered “backward” from English.

However, most students see the reading as just another thing to add to their homework pile.

“It’s just another thing to keep track of,” said Athulya Murali, 9.

“It’s kind of discouraging when you don’t understand all that is going on,” said Alexis Ream, 10. Most of her classmates agree that the vocabulary and verb tenses are too advanced for the level of Spanish that they are at.

Although reading a book in Spanish is good exposition to the language and culture, it might be too difficult for a first and second quarter assignment.