Discussion questions for The Tortilla Curtain by T. C. Boyle

1. 1. What were your initial impressions of the four main characters?  How did your feelings about the characters change throughout the book?
   2. Do you feel that Boyle treated both couples equally?  The New York Times’s reviewer felt that he had only contempt for the Mossbachers but writes with great sensitivity about the Rincóns.  Do you agree?
   3. This book has been compared to The Grapes of Wrath as being about the “the Okies of the 1990s”.  Do you think that comparison is apt?
   4. The Washington Post’s reviewer takes Boyle to task for giving readers a “cynical exploitation of a painfully divided city for the sake of a good yarn” rather than a “call to arms or even a sympathetic portrait”.  Do you think that this book is exploitative?  Of whom?  In what way?
   5. The reviewer for MexConnect.com praises Boyle for doing his research.  “The Mexicans are real people with feelings, memories and fully described lives, not only their lives in America but the lives they left south of the border. One really feels their fear, their despair, their anger as they pursue the “American dream”.  Do you agree?
   6. Delaney sees himself as a “liberal humanist,” but by the end of the book he has a very hostile attitude towards immigrants in general, and Mexicans in particular.  Do you think Delaney was really always a racist, or did his racism develop over the course of the novel?  What parts of the text pointed you to one conclusion or the other?
   7. In 2010, a parent attempted to have The Tortilla Curtain removed from the school curriculum of Montgomery High School in Santa Rosa, CA, objecting to its “depiction of rape, graphic sex, racial relations and frequent profanity”.  The School Board disagreed, and decided to “keep the book available for classroom lessons. The book will be limited to junior and seniors and students and their parents are allowed to opt out of reading the text and to study an alternate selection”.  What are your thoughts?

For more questions, check out the publisher’s resources.

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