Under The Mesquite

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Reflect on stories you have read—stories that mirror your own experiences and stories about identities different from your own. How did it feel to see yourself mirrored in a story? What did you gain/learn by reading books about people of other identities?

Teaching Suggestion: This discussion may be continued by asking students to reflect on the value of reading stories about characters with cultures that are different from their own. After sharing the author’s personal experiences on which she bases her characters, you might ask if they have read or watched stories from similar perspectives.

• This interview with the author by Books in Common covers several potential topics of interest including the author’s inspiration, writing process, and audience.
• Teacher resource (not student-facing): This article from the SIGNAL Journal is lengthy, but it’s an insightful piece both about how Guadalupe Garcia McCall’s personal experiences shaped her novel and about its role within the broader genres of Chicana and multicultural literature.

2. What is the novel-in-verse, or verse novel, genre? What characteristics are evident, and how does a novel written in verse impact the reader’s experience?