"'La frontera'... I heard it for the first time back in the late 1940s when Papa and Mama told me and Roberto, my older brother, that someday we would take a long trip north, cross la front era, enter California, and leave our poverty behind." So begins this honest and powerful account of a family's journey to the fields of California - to a life of constant moving, from strawberry fields to cotton fields, from tent cities to one-room shacks, from...

Leaving his home in a migrant community, Francisco sets off for college, carrying memories of years of poverty and prejudice.

Traces the author's education at Columbia University, where he struggled with cultural differences and a changing sense of identity.

A story presented in English and Spanish in which a boy named Panchito worries that he will not get the gift he has been hoping for when his family has to move a few days before Christmas to find work.

The author describes the personal challenges he faced while trying to continue his education, and his guilt over going off to college after his father returned to Mexico, leaving his family in poverty.