Francisco Jimenez

Dr. Jimenez (The Circuit book review)

Francisco Jimenez was born in Tlaquepaque, Mexico, in 1943 and moved to America when he was a young boy. In his award winning books The Circuit and Breaking Through, he writes about his experience of coming from Mexico and working in the fields in America while being strongly discriminated. Despite the seemingly endless amount obstacles he had to go through, in the end, he realized his dream of going to college. He is a hero because of his courageousness, his determination and he is a role model to many other immigrants suffering through discrimination or family troubles.

In the book, he describes his life coming into the U.S and what he had to “break through” to survive the troubles. When he was a boy, he could never finish school because of his family’s conditions. Since the family could barely provide money for food and shelter, the children had to help support the family in crucial times. Jimenez stated that he had a strong desire to get through school and to eventually get accepted into a college. However, as you would expect, things weren’t exactly a smooth road forward. His girlfriend’s family discriminated against him for being Mexican, he had trouble learning English, and could barely find time to do his school work, but he found ways to work around his schedule and found a path. I truly admired his sense of time management and his determination for education. In his books The Circuit and Breaking Through, his difficult experiences in his youth bring out his heroic actions and his dream.

He is a hero because even though he grew up with a hard life with his family of migrant workers, he managed to try hard in school and stayed dedicated to get a better life. Also, the books he wrote are about the stories of many families, including his. He also hoped that his writing would give a voice to a large audience in society that had been ignored for many years. Mr. Jimenez said “My primary goal in writing both scholarly and creative works is to fill the need for cultural and human understanding, between the United States and Mexico in particular”. This made him a hero by wanting to give everyone a thought that we are all connected no matter our historical background or where we came from.

To us, Francisco Jimenez is truly a great example of a hero because of his aspects of a role model and his courageousness. Even through times of seemingly endless trouble, he separated his work time, with his school work and braved through the fears of being deported back to Mexico. His feat of being able attend a college truly inspired us and reminded us that everyone can be successful. Despite the numerous accounts of failure and falls Francisco had to endure, he learned from his mistakes and tried his best to make it through. I think he tried to emphasize the fact that if you try to achieve your dream with enough effort, then you have a high chance of making it. I’m sure that his actions influenced many other people of different ethnic groups and he made a difference in other people’s lives. To us, that is the work of a true hero.