The red camp

by Debra Diaz

From barrios and labor camps spring life and inspiration. The Red Camp weaves a deeply humane and moving tapestry of coming of age and of the mundane and ugly transformed into the beauty of women discovering themselves. Amid the poverty, exploitation and discrimination, families set down roots, send children to school and raise them to become "Americans," all in the hopes of providing a better life. Debra Diaz has poetically recreated for us the life of one family struggling under the red roof of its shanty. The women of the Cruz family - Carmen, the mother, and daughters Emily, Gloria, Rita and Laura - spin mesmerizing tales of hope. They tell of the exquisite tension of male-female relationships, the sweet discovery of love, the high expectations and bitter disillusionment that husband and wife, parents and children bear for each other, and the difficulty of life among a group of people caught between two cultures.