Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida By Victor Martinez

HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 1996

Concept Analysis By Whitney Lewis

Brief Synopsis

Life is hard when you’re a 14 year old kid in a dysfunctional family trying to fit into the Mexican-American

world. Through tantalizing metaphor and personal anecdotes, Manny Hernandez gives readers a front row

ticket to his coming of age struggles in less than ideal circumstances. In this personal narrative we travel with

Manny to the different part-time jobs his brother goes through like post cards, see first-hand experiences with

an alcoholic father, grapple with charity and independence from the point-of-view of a minority, witness

domestic violence and forgiveness, deal with death, and watch this young man choose between what is right

and wrong in his search for acceptance.

This book is very real in its portrayal of heavy subject matter, but accurate. The plot structure is different than

most novels because there isn’t one main antagonist or blatant challenge that is solved. Each chapter contains

its own story and could be read alone; but each chapter contributes to the overarching themes of

responsibility and discrimination. Junior high students may be shocked, but more than likely intrigued by the

scenarios described. With more than a dozen expletives and a few mature scenes, teachers may need to

contextualize some of the material covered. Another unique aspect of this book is the insertion of Spanish

phrases throughout. Bi-lingual students will love this and anyone in America who has another strong cultural

background will be able to relate well to the Hernandez family.

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The Big Question: What are we responsible for in life?

Mr. Martinez poses a great question for young adult readers through the store of 14 yr. old Manny Martinez. Manny’s older sister Magda often pawns off her responsibilities to him. When the dad is drunk, Manny takes on responsibilities as man of the house to help his mom because his older brother just doesn’t care. At school Manny helps the Mexican boxing team and eventually he joins a gang where expectations are made. Even though his family life is discouraging, his school situation is less than ideal, and his friends are often a bad influence on him, the choice is still Manny’s – Is he responsible for his own decisions and his life’s success? Without family support and against all odds, can he still choose his life path? Parrot in the Oven: Mi Vida explores these questions.

Background Knowledge

“In 2006, more than 11.5 million Mexican immigrants resided in the United States, accounting for 30.7 percent of all US immigrants” (Batalova). This mix of cultures often creates tension or difficulty.

In an article entitled Second Generation Immigration Issues, the author explains part of the difficulty for these immigrants. “The experience of second generation immigrants is commonly described as ‘being caught between cultures’, ‘negotiating between two worlds’ or ‘walking a

tightrope’. Most second generation individuals feel as though they are living in two separate worlds: at home and at school. These children develop two sets of behaviours to deal with the two contexts. This results in high stress levels on second generation children facing an ever shifting sense of self,” (Saleem).

Themes:

The power of choice - In every anecdote in the novel, the reader gets to see Manny and his family making decisions that effect their lives in dramatic ways. The story even starts with a list of bad choices Nardo or his bosses made that lost him his jobs. The cycle of poverty and destructive family habits is vicious. Mom’s life was “ruined” when she got pregnant as a teenager. In spite of all the pleadings, Magda followed suit. Dad yells at Nardo throughout the novel for being lazy and good-for-nothing, yet remains unemployed almost the entire duration of the novel. Manny is terrified of his father walking around with his gun, yet Manny gets the gun down, aims, and shoots at his little sister in like manner. But in spite of his family and his friends, Manny is still given choices and decides for himself what he will or will not make of his life.

Honesty is the best policy – throughout the book Magda lies to Mom; Mom lies to Dad; Nardo lies to Dad; Manny lies to Pedi, etc. This only leads to irresponsible behavior and distrust. At one point, even the baby girl, Pedi, calls her brother out. “… she bulldozed the domino house…. Because you’re a liar!” (p. 97). Down to the smallest member of the family, there are trust issues, possibly even hatred. It is not hard to see how the dishonesty, so prevelant in society, backfires on each individual.

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Prideful prejudice is destructive - Whether it is Manny’s dad furious with the white school teacher for bringing Manny home from school, or the secretary at the school not wanting to allow Manny to transfer schools to get a better education, the discrimination is clearly damaging. Mr. Hernandez doesn’t want to accept charity from any, “white guys like Mr. Hart, who had good jobs and dressed in white shirts and black ties,” (p. 46). In the Hernandez family, white people just meant trouble and for many white people, hispanics just meant trouble. Although some well-to-do caucasians could have helped the family financially and educationally, their hatred and pride halted any benefits that might have come. And for insensitive people inclined to be racist, like the secretary and the pharmacist Mr. Gidden, good kids like Manny with good hearts, wanting to contribute to society and be respectful citizens, were often bullied into inferiority and hopelessness. Parties on both sides of the coin really hurt themselves in their attempt to “protect” themselves from the other side.

Setting:

This novel takes place by the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Fresno, California. The Hernandez family lives in “the projects”. You may need to explain to students that government “projects” are neighborhoods of housing for low-income families. For more information visit: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/rental_assistance/phprog

California is a state with a high population of Hispanic immigrants, especially from Mexico since it is a border state, so the novel is set in a city where racial tensions run high. For more information on gangs visit:

http://people.howstuffworks.com/street-gang.htm

Point of View:

Manuel Hernandez is the first person limited narrator of the novel. This is his coming of age story from his perspective. As such, the discontinuity of the novel makes sense, as told by a 14 year old.

Characterization:

Manny

The most hopeful character in the book is 14 yr. old Manuel Hernandez, the narrator and maturing protagonist. He has dreams, and he is just about the only one willing to work for them.

"I thought of the baseball glove, all clean and stiff and leather-smelling, and of myself in the cool green lawn of center field. I imagined already being on the baseball team at school, and people looking at me. Not these people picking chilies or those sent away in the vans, but people I had yet to know, watching me as I stood mightily in the center field. I looked down at the sacks, then far out in the distance at the clouds of dust folding and unfolding where the vans were pulling away. I wondered how long I'd have had to work to fill those sacks.” (p. 20)

Manny, as they call him, is constantly faced with big decisions, like whether or not to get a job, change schools, pull the trigger with the gun aimed at his sister, stand up to his drunk dad, join a gang, etc. With little or no guidance, Manny tries to make the right decisions, but faces all of the emotions and hormones of a regular

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teenager. Throughout the novel this somewhat shy, but strong-willed youth deals with poverty, discrimination, and family issues which help him develop and mature and eventually make him into the kind of young man who can make moral decisions on his own.

Mom

Mom, as she is always called in the novel, got prematurely pregnant as a teenager and by the time Manny is narrating the book, she is enduring the consequences – a painful and sad life married to an alcoholic, trapped in poverty, watching her children make the same mistakes she made. She even loses her mother. She is a strict parent figure, probably making up for the lack of parenting of her husband.

“Mom was more quiet. Whenever she worried about something she’d bite her nails and look up at the sky;

not like she was staring at the clouds, but like the whole sky was the most marvelous sight she’d ever seen. ..When they started shouting and throwing arms around… Mom’s shrieks chased away the panicked air;” (p. 26-27).

Dad, Manuel

This character causes more problems than most, and his background is never given, possibly because Manny doesn’t know it, so it is hard to understand why Manuel, or Mano, acts the way he does – violently, rashly, negatively, forcefully. At times, his desire to help his family does show through. But the majority of the time his alcoholism and machismo prevent him from his responsibilities. Manny writes about his dad,

...I thought about calling Dad to see if he'd give me a ride home, but figured he was still numb form drinking the night before and would probably scold me for the hell of it. Besides, Mom wanted to keep it hush about me attending a school across town. She thought schooling could graduate me into places that make her eyes gleam. Dad thought I should cut school altogether and get a dishwashing job. Start on the bottom and work your way up, that's what he'd say. Only most of the people he knew started on the bottom and worked their way sideways. (p. 38)

‘Nardo’

The big older brother that Manny looks up to… kind of. He is physically strong (that’s why the kids at school are nice to Manny, because they want his brother on the boxing team), self-centered, disrespectful and usually lazy. But he does work jobs here and there with his little brother and shares his advice, especially about girls and white people.

“For his part, Nardo stayed home lifting weights and doing sit-ups and push-ups, and nursing any piddling little pimple worth a few hours of panic. He was a nut about his handsome looks, and must have tenderly combed his hair at least twenty times a day in the mirror.” (p. 6)

Magda

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“… impregnated by a boy that she doesn't particularly like, but that she goes with out of loneliness. The baby does not make it and the medical problems resulting from this cause some seemingly significant problems for Magda that frighten Manny and the family. It becomes clear that Magda's decision to rebel against her family and sleep with a boy during her teenage years parallel the decisions that her mother made that resulted in her living in poverty married to an alcoholic, just trying to scrape out a meager existence.” (Williams)

Literary Terms:

Climax “The moment in a play, novel, short story, or narrative poem at which the crisis reaches its point of greatest intensity and is thereafter resolved. It is also the peak of emotional response from a reader or spectator and usually the turning point in the action.” (Wheeler)

Pgs. 209-213 has an intense, climactic scene where all of the anecdotes come together and Manny realizes what he should and could be and in an instant decides where he stands, alone, not with Eddie and the gang.

Conflict

“The opposition between two characters (such as a protagonist and an antagonist), between two large groups of people, or between the protagonist and a larger problem such as forces of nature, ideas, public mores, and so on. Conflict may also be completely internal, such as the protagonist struggling with his psychological tendencies (drug addiction, self-destructive behavior, and so on); William Faulkner famously claimed that the most important literature deals with the subject of "the human heart in conflict with itself." Conflict is the engine that drives a plot.” (Wheeler)

Man vs. man – Manny struggling against alcoholic father

– Manny vs. his brother’s apathy Man vs. nature – the workers struggling against the heat and the burning chilies in the fields Man vs. self – Manny deciding if he should be part of the gang and the robbery Dialogue

“The lines spoken by a character or characters in a play, essay, story, or novel, especially a conversation between two characters, or a literary work that takes the form of such a discussion” (Wheeler)

Chapter 3 contains great dialogue between Manny and his school teacher, Mr. Hart which reveals much about the personality, and attitudes of each character. Throughout the novel there is dialogue, but it is generally very one sided – scolding, mocking, or instructing. Chapter 3 is different in that there is mutual respect for once between the speakers.

Figurative language

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A deviation from what speakers of a language understand as the ordinary or standard use of words in order to achieve some special meaning or effect.

A few examples:

“A lump of salt caught in my throat, closing like a fist…” -simile “…as I studied the bark skin of her face – each crack sealed with perfect makeup” (p. 38) -metaphor Flashback

“A method of narration in which present action is temporarily interrupted so that the reader can witness past events--usually in the form of a character's memories, dreams, narration, or even authorial commentary” (Wheeler)

“Long ago, under the drooping branches, was once a small girl, our mother, with a handkerchief covering her dark, pony eyes. She was swinging a stick at a bull piñata slung on a rope. By a chance hit, she burst open the clay pot nestled inside the bull’s belly. Fistfuls of chocolates and candy came cascading out of the wound. Everyone screamed with excitement. The children, from the once full neighborhood of children, scurried about, eyes watery and chubby hands stashing candies into their pockets.” (p. 83)

Metaphor “A comparison or analogy stated in such a way as to imply that one object is another one, figuratively speaking.” (Wheeler) This book is chalk full of metaphors. The language is beautiful and helps the reader to understand exactly what Manny is seeing and/or feeling. A few examples from the book are: “His [hands’] were wings in a blur of wonder, mine stirred a pot of warm honey.”(p. 14) “Grandma came around from the front… Ropes pulled at her as she walked…” (p. 80) “My hands were jittering… and my voice leaked through a wet sponge.” (p.100) Simile “An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing.” (Wheeler) “You could almost hear the strategies sizzling around inside his head, like hot sand swirling inside a tin cup.” (p.88)

“A lump of salt caught in my throat, closing like a fist, as I studied the bark skin of her face – each crack sealed with perfect makeup.” (p. 89)

Affective Issues

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Written from the eyes of a teenager, this novel has great relevance for middle and high school students who are coming of age and learning how to be independent adults. This book should be quite interesting to the general student body since it explores teen issues such as acceptance, drug use, peer pressure, gangs, violence, family relations, honesty, etc. In this novel, Manny is realizing something that many teens realize, that he can become the framer of his own destiny. He is given responsibilities, like his mom asking him to get his transcript to transfer to a better school; he is thrown responsibilities, for example when Magda leaves him with the baby or his Mom tells him to go get his drunk father from the pool hall; and Manny takes on responsibilities, such as trying to dissuade his father from shooting his mother and volunteering as the boxing team assistant. Teachers can draw on a plethora of themes and scenarios familiar to teenagers. Two major examples are listed below.

Acceptance

Mr. Hart’s “charity”

Manny is treated like a “penny person”, not worth anything more than that at home, so all around him he is looking to be appreciated and valued. He finds respect and value with Mr. Hart, a school teacher who believes Manny actually has potential.

“Did you ever stop to think, Manuel, that maybe you have to go places, experience things?” “Well, sir, I never thought about it, actually.” “How about it if I give you a ride home?”

But when he shows up at the house with a crisp twenty dollar bill, his father’s pride and hatred stop Manny from receiving any further benefit from the kindness and acceptance of the teacher.

Academic Excellence

Manny even has aspirations to succeed academically but his friends don’t think that is so cool.

“I hoped, in fact, that by some wildcard of luck they’d transfer me over from Mr. Shattler’s class, where all we did was read magazines and play bingo games, to hers,

where students read detective books and stuff by that Shakespeare guy. Except for Albert, the guys I hung with thought that if they even flicked through the pages of a

book, ink would rub off on their hands and mark them sissies for life.” (p. 125)

The Gang

Eventually, Manny even joins a gang, in hopes of finding the cool friends, lusty girls, and exciting lifestyle he felt like he was missing. Hormones raging, Manny will do almost anything, as we see in chapter 10, for that “love” he thinks he wants and the tough status associated with being part of a tight-knit group. He even endured a painful initiation to prove his “courage”. Students can discuss here, what real courage is. Does Manny have it and show it?

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“The initiation was to test a guy’s courage. You could either sissy out, or have Mondo think you brave enough to stand the punishment.”

“Suddenly Eddie dropped to the ground, and before I could lift my leg, he hooked his left ankle behind my heel and shoved at my knee with his right foot. My knee hinge locked and I fell.... Next came a thud against my ribs as he sunk his knee into me, and a glancing heel burn on my neck form Eddie.”

Drug Use

In the culture of the school and amongst his Mexican friends, drug use was accepted and often even expected. His dad, the chicanos at school, the guys in the gang, all of them smoke. Manny is faced with it every day and has opportunity to take part or take a stand without any authority figures to influence him. Page 190 gives the best example of this, but drugs and alcohol are present throughout the novel.

“… I thought it amazing that Lencho even tried to spark up the Chicano guys to join his boxing team. Not that the Chicano guys couldn’t fight or anything. There were a lot of ornery vatos around, but they just hung around and smoked and ditched class and acted like the school was some kind of contaminated nuclear zone.” (p. 117)

Vocabulary Issues

This novel is rich with beautiful vocabulary to create imagery, slang, and most strikingly – Spanish. Although the narrator is only 14, some of the Martinez’s diction comes out and the dialogue from the adults may bring up a few challenges for middle school students. The novel is a fairly easy read if you understand the Spanish as it is set in modern America and told from the perspective of a teenager. Spanish words in the first chapter:

Spanish Word/phrase Meaning Mi vida My life Es muy vivo He’s very active/alive Vamos muchachos, aquí hay un surco muy bueno que pueden piscar

Over here you guys, there’s a really good furrow that we can harvest/pick

Bracero Day laborer/worker Gavacho Insulting term for a white man

The slang should be easily understood and the vocabulary used in the metaphorical phrases is not hard to understand, but may need to be explained to make complete sense in context. For example, paragraphs such as the following are full of meaning and may need to be unpacked.

Talking about his grandmother after her death, Mannyimagined, “She will flake away into dirt, I thought, just as the sun does the bottom of a pond during a drought. Her shadow will be erased, and her soul will drift to heaven like the fluff of a dandelion in the wind. And then it will blossom in another garden, so bright the colors will hurt your eyes.” (p. 89)

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Implications for Students of Diversity

Possibly the greatest strength of this novel is the author’s ability to make this text connect to Latin- American students and their peers. Through Spanish, English, Spanglish, cultural anecdotes, real life situations, and current issues relating to the mix of cultures in the United States, this book can make the lost Hispanic student feel understood and included while simultaneously opening up the perspective of the other students, regardless of their own ethnicity.

Discrimination

In this novel, both the latinos and Caucasians spur each other and the tension, spoken or unspoken, is obvious. Manny is caught between his Mexican heritage and his American surroundings and it seems that neither side wants him to embrace the other’s culture.

When Manny went in to the school secretary to get a transcript to help him transfer to a better school, she tested his reading just because he is Mexican and when handing him the folder, “she pushed it away like a worm had plopped down on it from the ceiling.” (p. 38)

When a kind school teacher gave Manny a ride home and got out to meet his parents we get this description:

“My dad had it in for white guys like Mr. Hart who had good jobs and dressed in white shirts and black ties. It didn’t matter that he was my teacher and nice enough to give me a ride home. It didn’t matter that, for whatever else anyone could say about him, Mr. Hart was an ok guy…. No matter how many sophisticated ways I could turn it over to convince him, nothing would make sense to my dad. Letting Mr. Hart take me home was the worst acid I could have poured into his stomach.” (p. 46)

Honoring family

Manny’s family and much of Hispanic culture places a very high value on family. Although the Hernandez family is described as quite dysfunctional and at times even scary, the family is still the most important part of life as demonstrated when the grandma is sick and the parents take care of her and her house even when it’s very inconvenient and then when she dies how the aunts and uncles and cousins all get together.

The most glorious scene in the whole book is Manny’s final description of his living room and all that it represents once he has figured out his responsibilities and discovered his confidence to fulfill them. He thinks,

…I knew, as my eyes got drowsy and the bright walls of the room glowed around me, that I never again would see anything so wondrous as my two sisters lying on the couch. And it wasn’t just them, but the whole room: the squiggly TV, the lumpy cherub angels on the frame of the painting, the glass-top coffee table, my mother’s animals, gleaming in the sunlight. This room was what my mother spent so much energy cleaning and keeping together, and what my father spent so much energy tearing apart. And it was wondrous, like a place I was meant to be. A place, I felt, that I had come back to after a long journey of being away. (p. 215)

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It was home because of the people there, in spite of their weaknesses, who he cares about deeply and made him the man he is becoming.

Gender Issues

Chauvinism, or machismo as it’s known in Hispanic countries, is exhibited in this book in full force. Men and women are harshly stereotyped in scenes such as, “ Dad was sitting on the living room couch, his feet propped on the coffee table, drinking can of beer and nipping little gulps of tequila from a pint bottle. In the kitchen, Mom was scrubbing the counter,” (p. 33).

Research Issues

Immigrant workforce Discrimination Multiculturalism in America Mexican-American culture Alcoholism Education in America, equality in the schools

Project Ideas

________ in the _________: My life – Personal narratives o Each student writes a personal essay about their teenage life. If a book were going to be written

about their life, how would they fill in the blanks in the title to describe their life? It’s no longer a parrot in the oven, but perhaps a hand on the keyboard, a wool sweater in the dryer, a shout in the hallway, etc. Students then get to write about an experience in their life that explains the title of their essay.

In the Outfield – Creating a collage of personal hopes and dreams, like Manny’s baseball fantasy, and the goals to get there.

o Manny has hopes and dreams, but doesn’t realize he might actually be able to achieve them until the end of the book. As a final project, students can create a collage using pictures and words from magazines to show what their dreams are and what goals they have to achieve those dreams.

Movie Stars: Students record themselves re-enacting one of the scenes from the book using the dialogue given and then filling in the rest of the details with plausible creativity.

o Teenagers love movies, so let them make their own, based on the book. Let students film a chapter or small scene from the book and then verbally explain, after the scene, why they

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chose the scene that they chose and what it taught them about what we are responsible for in our lives?

Text Sets

• Movies: o West Side Story (1961) Hispanic gangs team up in an award-winning musical to tell the

story of Romeo & Juliet in modern America with all of its problems.

o Boyz N the Hood (1991) Problems of growing up as African-Americans in South Central L.A., gang violence, and family issues.

o Born in East L.A. (1987) Humorous look at discrimination against Mexican-Americans and immigration policies.

o Dancer, TX Pop. 81 (1998) Story of four small town Anglo-American boys growing up and facing conflicts with parents and issues of independence.

o City Slickers (1991) A particular clip in this movie would be useful to the class's understanding of Manny's family problems: as the three friends drive cattle, Bruno Kirby's character describes the best and worst day, a time when he stood up to his unfaithful father for the good of his family. (Hudson)

• Poetry: “Sonrisas” by Pat Mora

• Music: “Do You Know” or “Dimelo” by Enrique Iglesias o This is the same song but in English or Spanish. It could be paired with ch. 4 and played

as if the thoughts of Manny’s mom who is enduring a relationship with someone who acts like he doesn’t care about her. Violence and/or gender issues could be discussed here.

• Related texts:

o Ortego, Phillip. (1975)."Between Two Cultures." Chicano Voices. Ed. Carlota Cardenas de Dwyer. Dallas: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 19-25. This essay describes the migration of Mexicans into America from earlier time periods and discusses the conflicts between Mexican-Americans, particularly focusing on political movements.

o Rodriquez, Joseph. (1998). East Side Stories: Gang Life in East L.A. New York: Powerhouse Books. 186 pp. While the time period may be different than the setting of the novel, these photographs of gang members portray the real horror of everyday violence and poverty.

o Hernandez, Arturo. (1998). Peace in the Streets: Breaking the Cycle of Gang Violence. Washington, D.C.: Child Welfare League of America. 197 pp. This book also depicts the common struggles faced by those who live near gangs, but points to positive signs of improvement and encourages such progress.

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o Rodriquez, Art. (1999). East Side Dreams. Coyote, CA: Dream Press House. 267 pp. This personal account of a former gang member tells of his past mistakes and present reformed lifestyle. His development parallels Manny's, and comparisons may be made between the two.

o Gordon, Mary. (1994)."The Neighborhood." Coming of Age in America. Ed. Mary Frosch. New York: The New Press. pp. 7-16. This story explores the neighborhood of an Irish-American girl, whose family develops an unspoken understanding with a neighboring family because of similar hardships. Parent-child relationships also enter this story.

o Schwartz, Adam. (1994)."Where is it Written." Coming of Age in America. Ed. Mary Frosch. New York: The New Press. pp. 82-89. This story focuses on the relationship of an upper-class Jewish-American boy to his somewhat psychotic mother. The disputes provide an interesting comparison to Manny's opinions of and encounters with his parents.

o Gloria, Eugene. (2001)."Assimilation." Asian-American Literature. McGraw-Hill. pp. 260-261. This poem describes a young Filipino's loss of ethnic identity when at school he hides the lunch his mother prepares for him.

(Wheeler)

References:

Batalova, Jeanne. Migration Information Source. “Mexican Immigrants in the United States”. April 2008. Web. Nov. 27 2012. http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?ID=679

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Saleem, Sadia. Healthy Living. “The Immigrant Experience”. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. http://www.healthylivingmagazine.ca/immigrant-experience

Book cover image

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.ebr.lib.la.us/teens/teenzone/greatreads/parrotintheoven.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.ebr.lib.la.us/teens/teenzone/greatreads/his%2520reality.htm&h=648&w=403&sz=73&tbnid=afD4QFnCjLpFyM:&tbnh=90&tbnw=56&zoom=1&usg=__VVLJjl5RpGb2_NZrtk6-PmSt5p0=&docid=jzeJnV3GscLrrM&sa=X&ei=FFCQUNTRNYbMigKdx4DQCA&ved=0CEQQ9QEwBA&dur=3662

chili pepper image

http://static4.depositphotos.com/1001284/277/v/950/depositphotos_2778133-Red-hot-chili-pepper.jpg

Hendricks, Greg; Straub, Kim; Williams,Chris. “A Parrot Struggling to Find an Umbrella in the Oven of Life”. Young Adult Literature Reviews By Future Teachers at Grand Valley State University. 2012. Web. 26 November 2012.

http://yareviews.wikispaces.com/Parrot+in+the+Oven+by+Victor+Martinez

Wheeler, L. Kip. Literary Terms and Definitions. Web. 28 Nov. 2012.

http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_C.html#top.of.lit.terms.C

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