Steel and Identity: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Lorain, OH

This section looks at daily life more specifically  for Mexicans in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s through a textual analysis of a memoir by Frank S. Mendez, "You Can't Be Mexican: You Talk Just Like Me."  In 1925 Mendez was born in Iowa to Mexican immigrant parents and moved to Lorain with his family in the same year. His father worked in the steel mill and his maternal grandmother raised Frank and his three siblings in various residences in South Lorain.  The pages in this section contain excepts from the text,  that provide insight as to what life was like living in South Lorain as the son of a Mexican immigrant.

Focus Topic for all "You Can't Be Mexican" pages: List the challenges and/or hardships Frank went through as a child then explain how life might have been different for him if he grew up in Lorain today. 

"My grandmother had prepared the usual breakfast of small servings of toast, milk, tortillas, and beans, the last two items served three times a day.  The lunch and supper meals were augmented with a meat product (almost always baloney) and one or two vegetables.  The portions were small, not very filling, and there were no second servings.  I scoured my plate with my last piece of tortilla- dishwashing was a lark." (Mendez, 26) 

"There were a few chores that I did not try to avoid.  One task was culling from a one-pound bag of beans the bits and pebbles that had escaped the eyes of the pickers and processors.  It took only one chipped tooth to convince me that I could never again eat cooked beans unless I had personally inspected every bag prior to their being cooked.  Two other chores were of interest to me.  I dug up sassafras roots growing in the woods for Mama's tea, and when we had no spinach plant and could not afford to buy ay, I snipped dandelion leaves from the nearby grassland areas.  I detected little difference in taste between the cooked spinach and dandelion leaves." (Mendez, 28)