{"product_id":"the-boys-from-little-mexico-isbn-9780807001523","title":"The Boys from Little Mexico","description":"\u003cp\u003eFor nineteen straight years, the all-Hispanic boys’ soccer team from Oregon’s Woodburn High has made the playoffs. As they prepare to make it twenty, one thing will become clear: Los Perros play the beautiful game with heart, pride, and their lives on the line. Their spirited drive gives a rare sense of hope and unity to a blue-collar farming community that has been transformed by waves of immigrants over recent decades, a town locals call “Little Mexico.” Watched over by a south Texas transplant—a surrogate father to half the squad—this band of brothers must learn to come together on the field and look after each other off it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e More than just riveting sports writing, \u003ci\u003eThe Boys from Little Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e is about the fight for the future of the next generation—and a hard, true look at boys dismissed as gang-bangers, told to “go home” by lily-white sideline crowds. The wins and losses they notch along the way spin a striking tale about what it takes to capture the American Dream.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003ePreface\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIntroduction\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Field of Play\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePreseason\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOne: Steps to Success\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTwo: The Immigrants’ Game\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThree: Octavio\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFour: Water on Stone\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSeason\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFive: A Lush and Level Field\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSix: El Norte\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSeven: Carlos\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEight: Adjustments\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eNine: The Woodburn Curse\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eTen: Reading and Writing\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eEleven: Playing Rough\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ePostseason\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTwelve: The Fourth Seed\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThirteen: This Dream\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFourteen: Just a Game\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFifteen: Game Over\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eEpilogue\u003c\/i\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Boys from Little Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e, Steve Wilson does more than chase the American Dream—he captures it on the move. Wilson provides us with a glimpse of the future of sports in America, one that promises to be as rich and compelling as the past.—Glenn Stout, author and Series Editor of \u003ci\u003eThe Best American Sports Writing\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I hate soccer … but I loved this book. Steve Wilson has written a story where culture, sport, and good writing collide.\"—Larry Colton, former pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies and author of \u003ci\u003eCounting Coup\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Just as Buzz Bissinger did in \u003ci\u003eFriday Night Lights\u003c\/i\u003e, Steve Wilson manages to achieve the unexpected: a book about sports that turns out to be about so much more. He wrests poetry out of these boys' lives, while aiming directly for that one destination where we all seek home—the heart.\"—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of \u003ci\u003eInto the Beautiful North\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Devil's Highway\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"With compassion and an unflinching eye, Steve Wilson offers us through sports a preview of a new America, one whose people may look different, but whose virtues of what we like to believe in ourselves remain triumphantly the same.—Howard Bryant, ESPN senior writer and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Last Hero\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"A real-life account of the inequities surrounding immigration as lived by all concerned, this year in the life of the Woodburn Bulldogs offers no easy answers. The frustrations they face are saddening, but theirs is ultimately a hopeful tale. Very timely, with the World Cup in 2010!\"—Dana Brigham, manager\/co-owner, Brookline (Mass.) Booksmith\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Boys from Little Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e proves once again that the language of sports is universal. Steve Wilson takes a small corner of the world and shows how big it can be, especially when a caring coach partners with some talented players. This book is both heartbreaking and inspiring.\"—Madeleine Blais, author of \u003ci\u003eIn These Girls, Hope Is a Muscle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eThe Boys from Little Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e is an unvarnished and moving account of the dreams and despair of immigrant boys on a high school soccer team who struggle not only in their quest to win the state championship, but also in their desire to adapt as strangers in a new land. If you want to understand your new next-door neighbors, this is the book to read.—Sonia Nazario, author of \u003ci\u003eEnrique's Journey\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"On one level Steve Wilson has written a wonderful book about high school athletes in a community banded together by soccer glory. On another level, he's written a wonderful book about race, sociology, and the shifting borders within this country. \u003ci\u003eThe Boys from Little Mexico\u003c\/i\u003e will tell you more about the next generation of Americans than census data and politicians ever could.\"—Bill Reynolds, author of \u003ci\u003eFall River Dreams\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003e’78\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"American soccer is far too often viewed as a country club sport. Steve Wilson spent five years earning the trust of \u003ci\u003eLos Perros\u003c\/i\u003e in order to put a human face on the young men of America's fastest-growing minority group. With empathy and respect, Wilson reveals their compelling stories.\"—Grant Wahl, senior writer for \u003ci\u003eSports Illustrated\u003c\/i\u003e and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Beckham Experiment\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Steve Wilson's reporting is deep and true, clear and, at times, heartbreaking. These boys come alive on the page.\"—David Maraniss, author of \u003ci\u003eClemente\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWhen Pride Still Mattered\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eSteve Wilson \u003c\/b\u003eis the former publisher and editor of \u003ci\u003eMotionsickness: The Other Side of Travel\u003c\/i\u003e, a critically lauded magazine that was selected as a finalist for \u003ci\u003eUtne's\u003c\/i\u003e Best New Titles for 2001. He has also been published widely in newspapers and magazines, including the \u003ci\u003ePortland Tribune, American History,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eUtne\u003c\/i\u003e. A graduate of Portland State University's MA Writing Program, he teaches at PSU.I carried my one-year-old son, Ben, across the springy running track\u003cbr\u003e—one of those made from recycled athletic shoes—heading toward\u003cbr\u003ea grass field where about two dozen boys ran back and forth, their\u003cbr\u003eattention focused on a black-and-white ball. Coach Mike Flannigan\u003cbr\u003estood watching them, a tall pacing figure, face shaded by a dark baseball\u003cbr\u003ecap. He nodded at me as I put Ben down and turned his attention\u003cbr\u003eback to the game. The sun, blindingly bright, gleamed off a row of\u003cbr\u003emetal bleachers nearby.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFor the next fifteen minutes, I alternately chased my son and\u003cbr\u003ewatched the game. Even with my attention distracted, it didn’t take\u003cbr\u003elong to notice a wiry midfielder with a pencil-thin mustache who\u003cbr\u003ehad tremendous ball control. The ball left his foot, bounced around\u003cbr\u003eamong the other players, and returned, almost as if it were on a string.\u003cbr\u003eLike the others that Mike coached, this kid was Hispanic; unlike the\u003cbr\u003eothers, he played with focus and intensity, his face stern, almost grim.\u003cbr\u003eHis teammates seemed to be enjoying themselves, but Mustache was\u003cbr\u003elocked in a fight.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI picked up Ben and walked over to Coach Flannigan as Mustache\u003cbr\u003etrapped a pass and dribbled around an opposing player.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Who’s that?” I asked.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e “Oh, you noticed,” Mike said. “That’s Octavio. He’s probably our\u003cbr\u003ebest player.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eHe was clearly the best player in the group, moving around like a\u003cbr\u003espider, the soccer field his web.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Where’s he from?”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCoach Flannigan glanced over. “You’ll have to ask him,” he said.\u003cbr\u003ePeople from Woodburn can be reluctant to discuss their birthplace.\u003cbr\u003eWith few exceptions, Latinos in Woodburn either were born\u003cbr\u003ein Mexico or are Mexican-descended Americans, and for those\u003cbr\u003eborn in Mexico, legal status can be a touchy subject.\u003cbr\u003eSweat trickled down my forehead, and Ben struggled in my arms\u003cbr\u003eas something caught his attention. I put him down.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Have you met Carlos?” Coach Flannigan asked. He gestured\u003cbr\u003etoward a nearby bench, where a well-built teen sat talking to a girl\u003cbr\u003eabout his own age. Carlos turned and looked at us. His black hair\u003cbr\u003ewas combed forward over his forehead and seemed to shimmer with\u003cbr\u003eeither water or styling product.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Hi,” he said.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“How come you’re not playing?” I asked.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Injured,” he said, gesturing toward a leg.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Carlos is our keeper,” Coach Flannigan said, his eyes still on the\u003cbr\u003egame. “He’s probably the best keeper in the state.”\u003cbr\u003eCarlos snorted and turned back to the girl.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“These two guys are going to be the key to our next season,” the\u003cbr\u003ecoach said. “Hopefully, they can both keep healthy.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eMore sweat trickled down, and I removed my sunglasses to wipe\u003cbr\u003emy face. It was ninety-two degrees, the middle of August, and the\u003cbr\u003etemperature was forecast to approach one hundred—unusually hot\u003cbr\u003efor northern Oregon. The kids on the field were only a skeleton crew\u003cbr\u003eof the entire Woodburn High School squad, but here they were,\u003cbr\u003eplaying an intense pickup game against another partial team at midday\u003cbr\u003eon a shadeless field while their coach stood watching, unpaid\u003cbr\u003ebecause it was summer.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBen tottered off toward some football equipment and I followed,\u003cbr\u003ethinking, these guys sure take their soccer seriously.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI first heard of the Woodburn Bulldogs soccer team when I came\u003cbr\u003eacross a newspaper article about a game between the Bulldogs and\u003cbr\u003ethe visiting Lakeridge Pacers, from Lake Oswego, a town twenty\u003cbr\u003emiles north of Woodburn. I lost the article after I read it and never\u003cbr\u003etracked it down again, but I recall the story, in a Lake Oswego paper,\u003cbr\u003edescribing the Pacers traveling to a hostile and foreign land where\u003cbr\u003eSpanish was more common than English, and where, the article\u003cbr\u003eseemed to suggest, the visiting team was lucky to leave with their\u003cbr\u003ecars’ windshields intact.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLakeridge is one of two high schools in the town of Lake Oswego,\u003cbr\u003ethe most upper-crust suburb of Portland, Oregon’s largest city.\u003cbr\u003eIt’s a town where the wealthy live, which means almost everyone is\u003cbr\u003ewhite. Locals joke about Lake Oswego’s lack of diversity by calling it\u003cbr\u003e“Lake No-Negro.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWoodburn, on the other hand, calls itself “The City of Unity”\u003cbr\u003eand may be Oregon’s most ethnically diverse community. As of the\u003cbr\u003e2000 census, Woodburn was 51 percent Hispanic, 49 percent Anglo.\u003cbr\u003eEven this is somewhat misleading, since about 30 percent of\u003cbr\u003eWoodburn’s “Anglo” population belongs to a non-Latino group\u003cbr\u003eof immigrants, Russian Old Believers, large, sunburned men with\u003cbr\u003elong beards and women with scarf-covered heads, about ten thousand\u003cbr\u003eof whom fled religious persecution and ended up around Woodburn\u003cbr\u003ein the 1950s and 1960s.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe Woodburn Bulldogs and the Lakeridge Pacers don’t play\u003cbr\u003eeach other often. Because the teams are from different regional\u003cbr\u003eleagues, the only times they meet are in pre- and postseason matches.\u003cbr\u003eBoth schools typically field very good soccer teams; beyond that,\u003cbr\u003ethere are few resemblances. The two schools represent two completely\u003cbr\u003edifferent Oregons. One could say that they represent two\u003cbr\u003ecompletely different Americas.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eLake Oswego’s population is about 90 percent white, and an average\u003cbr\u003eresident makes $75,000 a year. Lake Oswego’s most notable\u003cbr\u003efeature is a privately owned lake surrounded by expensive homes.\u003cbr\u003eWoodburn, a short drive to the south, has a median income half that\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eof Lake Oswego’s. The most notable feature in Woodburn? The Mac-\u003cbr\u003eLaren Youth Correctional Facility.\u003cbr\u003eThe differences extend to the high schools. The students who\u003cbr\u003eattend Lakeridge, considered one of the best public high schools\u003cbr\u003ein the state, go to college: about 80 percent of Lakeridge grads attend\u003cbr\u003ea four-year university and 10 percent attend a community college.\u003cbr\u003eOnly 5 percent of Lakeridge students are eligible for a free or\u003cbr\u003ereduced-price lunch. At Woodburn High, 75 percent of the students\u003cbr\u003eare eligible for a free or reduced-price lunch. Not long ago, a lower\u003cbr\u003epercentage of Woodburn students graduated high school than Lakeridge\u003cbr\u003esent to universities. It’s so rare that Woodburn’s Hispanic students\u003cbr\u003ereceive scholarships that the local newspaper writes profiles\u003cbr\u003eabout the kids who do.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eWith all this in mind, it’s not surprising that people from the two\u003cbr\u003ecommunities don’t mix—usually when they do, it’s because one is\u003cbr\u003emowing the other’s lawn. The one place the two communities come\u003cbr\u003etogether on equal footing is on the soccer field. Not coincidentally,\u003cbr\u003ethe two demographic groups represented on that field—uppermiddle-\u003cbr\u003eclass Anglos and working-class Hispanics—are also the two\u003cbr\u003egroups in the United States for whom soccer is a real sport and not\u003cbr\u003ea punch line.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAt the time I first read about Woodburn’s soccer team, I was still\u003cbr\u003ea new arrival in Oregon. Woodburn, I knew, had factory outlets—I\u003cbr\u003ehad seen them from the freeway—but I lumped in Woodburn with\u003cbr\u003edozens of other single-exit suburbs cluttering the hour-long drive\u003cbr\u003ebetween Portland and Salem, the state capital. I didn’t know that at\u003cbr\u003ethe town’s Greyhound station, one could buy a one-way ticket to the\u003cbr\u003eNayarit city of Tepic, or that downtown Woodburn had the highest\u003cbr\u003econcentration of taquerias in the state, or that for girls in Woodburn,\u003cbr\u003eturning fifteen was a really big deal. Visiting one weekend, I found\u003cbr\u003ethat the single exit became a two-lane highway curving into Woodburn,\u003cbr\u003ewith more traffic than the town deserved. Highway 214 was\u003cbr\u003echoked with trucks carrying agricultural supplies to or from the area’s\u003cbr\u003efarms and nurseries. A distant line of green hills squatted beyond the\u003cbr\u003etown.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe residential neighborhoods looked like . . . well, pretty much\u003cbr\u003eevery other small town in the Northwest: a combination of new and\u003cbr\u003eold architecture, lots of trees, pickup trucks, minivans, and a scattering\u003cbr\u003eof churches. But, one thing was different. In parks and vacant lots,\u003cbr\u003ein front yards and in driveways, I saw boys and men kicking around\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ela pelota\u003c\/i\u003e—the soccer ball. In Woodburn, on Saturday afternoons, the\u003cbr\u003etown’s parks are crowded with Hispanic men’s league games, and the\u003cbr\u003ehigh point of the town’s biggest annual celebration, August’s Fiesta\u003cbr\u003eMexicana, is an intense men’s league tournament. The men I grew\u003cbr\u003eup with spent Saturdays playing golf or tennis; in Woodburn, men\u003cbr\u003eplay \u003ci\u003efútbol.\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44885947351269,"sku":"NP9780807001523","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807001523.jpg?v=1767738518","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-boys-from-little-mexico-isbn-9780807001523","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}