Book Proposal
Confessions of an American Mom Turned Mexican Smuggler
As Told to
Genre
Memoir/Commercial Women's Non-fiction/Humor/Multicultural
Count
90,000 words
Status
Manuscript complete, sample text from teacher’s manual available
Markets
Women, American ex-patriots, Mexican aficionados, Latinos, Spanish students
Agent
Peter
Rubie Literary Agency, 240 W. 35th Street, Suite 500
New York, NY 10001. Phone (212) 279-6214,
Synopsis
Freedom for a housewife in the 60's meant having the liberty to choose any brand of peanut butter her husband could afford and her children would allow. By that definition, Lois Sonna was free as a bird. But rather than soaring like the eagle of her dreams, Lois could only bat her useless wings against her middle-class suburban coop, feeling frumpy as a do-do bird. There, her husband ruled the roost, and he was adamant that she not work outside the home. Worse, the humorless man stubbornly refused to get her jokes. When he nixed her plans to accept a fabulous job offer and a run in with a balky vacuum left her feeling like a failure as a housewife, she did unthinkable: she got in the car and drove away. "Just a little vacation," she told herself while plunging headlong into the ultimate midlife crisis.
Two days later Lois wandered across the border into Mexico and chanced upon a bulletin board ad that said: "ENGLISH TEACHER IS WANTED. DEGREE IS NOT NECESSARY. EXPERIENCE IS NOT NECESSARY. SPANISH IS NOT NECESSARY." Recognizing that she had all the requisite non-qualifications, she applied and got the job. When her new boss learned of her PTA and Girl Scout Leader activities, he added $5 per week to her salary and made her the director, too.
When Lois returned to Illinois to collect her children, things got sticky. Her college-bound daughter, Linda, couldn't move to Mexico. Teenaged son, Bill, refused on principle. With five-year-old Larry and two-year-old Mark she headed for Irapuato.
Although Lois practiced every Spanish word she new during the long drive, her ability to say, "buenos dias," "adios," "adobe," "bravo," "matador," "chiquita banana," and "El Paso Taco sauce" didn't help her across the language barrier. Through a combination of mime and pointing in the dictionary, she was able to enroll students and start the school year. But her newfound ability to say "you can finance your books for our low monthly rate or pay cash," didn't keep the party invitations rolling in. It was a lonely time.
When Bill arrived for a visit, Lois tried to wow him with the local wonders in hopes he'd stay. It was a tough job, since there weren't any. However, in a restaurant specializing in fried goat testicles, an encounter with a cute señorita caused him to rethink the region's advantages. Unfortunately, the young miss was none other than Lois' nemesis, Maridel, the student from hell.
With her brood of 2.5 children (Bill spent about half of every year with her) safely ensconced in Mexico, Lois kept the peanut-butter-and-tortillawiches flowing while battling the cultural quirks that send less hardy tourists fleeing for home. She induced Mexican toilets to flush and water heaters to gush, learned to groan in Spanish when she contracted Montezuma's revenge, fended off amorous advances from macho males, and mastered the unwritten rules of foreign roads. Given her ability to attract disaster at every turn, she also mastered the bureaucracy while tangling with an burro houseguest who took up residence on her lawn, retaliating against obnoxious neighbors by holding their turkey hostage, and dyeing the peasants' hair pink.
Lois' visa required twice yearly returns to the border, and she defrayed the cost by stopping in K-Mart to shop for friends as well as for herself. After inadvertently drinking holy water at a convent she felt invincible, and St. Lois expanded her thriving contraband business. Her daring-do increased until she was caught red-handed with 200 tubes of mascara, 12 toilet seats, and a Sears automatic water heater. She didn't abandon her smuggling operation entirely, but she did scale it back. Her attempt to transport a local friend to the U.S. ended up with her being sentenced to do time in a Mexican prison. Fortunately, the judge suspended her sentence when she agreed to smuggle his son into Texas on her next border run.
Although Mexico freed Lois from her ex-husband's great thumb, her older two children kept up the pressure on her to return home and pursue a more normal existence. Their cause celebre was Larry and Mark, who they insisted were being deprived of a proper American upbringing. When Larry began attending college in the US, his social difficulties as he struggled with strange social rules caused him to combine forces with his older siblings. Together they convinced their wayward mom to move back to the U.S. and acculturate Mark "before it was too late."
As Lois prepared to move north, she began to worry. It might not be too late for Mark to adjust to life in the States, but what about her? She'd long since concluded that happiness was a question of chemistry and geography. Life in the Chicago suburbs had been as bland as a tortilla without the hot sauce, but in Mexico she had thrived as a hot tamale.
At a Denny's restaurant in Brownsville, an argument with Mark over her desire to throw heartburn to the wind and eat jalapeños unexpectedly calmed her queasiness about returning to the States.
The pressure to conform to other's expectations had caused her to flee her peanut-butter-and-jelly life. In Mexico she had felt freer to follow her own heart and live as a hot tamale. Now, she would combine her mixture of Mexican and American ingredients into a totally new dish and find happiness as a nacho. And if she wanted to spice up her life with a liberal helping of hot sauce, she'd sprinkle away!
Instructor's Guide
:
As a reader for units on culture in high school and college Spanish courses, and for college multicultural and women's issues courses, Tortillas & Peanut Butter serves as a vehicle for teaching students about the influence of culture. The instructor's guide will provide expanded multicultural information about modern Mexico and women's issues along with discussion questions and classroom activities designed to encourage critical thinking about multicultural and women's issues.
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