Under The Mesquite By Guadalupe Garca Mccal

Across the world, thousands of people struggle to cope with losses every day. Losing a family member or a good friend is heartbreaking, and getting over that loss takes a lot of time and can be extremely hard. Some of the hardest moments in life are after someone close to you dies, and it takes a lot of resilience to try and get back to normal. This inner fight against loss is amazingly illustrated in Guadalupe Garca McCal's book Under the Mesquite. The book tells the story of the main character, Lupita, fighting through all sorts of emotions in a new country while her mom is battling cancer. In her book, Under the Mesquite, McCall uses the mesquite’s ability to grow back from a root as a symbol to convey that sometimes you must "let go of

On a trip to Abuelita's house, Lupita continues to have issues coping with Mami's death. When Abuelita sees this she tells her that "sometimes it's best to take things down and start all over again." (193) This means that even though the loss of her mother was horrible and traumatizing, she can use it to become a better version of herself. By tearing the whole tree down, the resilience she's been using to keep herself going this entire time will help her further in life. This advice changes Lupita's whole outlook on life and it helps her finally accept Mami's death. Once she understands this, a "tiny piece of buried mesquite root determination flourishes." and her tree is finally ready to regrow. She realizes that Mami would have never wanted her to be so sad and starts to focus on all the happy and beautiful things in life. She symbolically throws away all her depressing poems as a way of wiping the slate clean to finally live her life and start being happier. This is the moment that her "chopped down tree grows back bigger and stronger than before" and she is finally able to laugh and smile for the first time in months. Lupita is finally able to move on and continue to have a successful life and this is all simply because she decided to let go of the sadness from her mother's passing and start focusing on all the amazing things in her