Zoo Island

"Zoo Island", by Tomas Rivera, refers to immigrants that have meager money and must work on a farm mainly to survive. This story is about a particular boy named Jose. Jose is 15 and, "woke up one day with a great desire to take a census count, form a town and make everybody in it do what he says." as the book states. He lives in a chicken coop along a whole bunch of other people. People come to the farm that Jose works on from another town because there isn't a gate keeping them out. Those townspeople like to gawp and laugh at the farm's inhabitants. This makes Jose all the other people that live on the farm very angry. "There are 83 souls, and you know what? They have a church, a dance hall, a filling station, a grocery store and even a little school. Here, we're more than 83, I'll bet, and we don't have any of that. Why, we only have a water pump and four outhouses, right?" When Jose takes a census count for all the people that live in the chicken coops, there are  88 1/2 other people. The half represent a woman who had given birth. When this was discovered, everyone on the farm had their picture taken next to a sign that said: Zoo Island, Pop. 88 1/2.

Every time Jose would go and see the sign, he,"got a warm feeling inside that started in his feet and rose through his body until he felt it in his throat and in all his senses." This shows how important being a part of a town was to the people in Zoo Island. The census makes the people on Zoo Island feel special, like they can actually be a part of the world on a positive note. Before the census, Jose and the others were being beaten down and laughed at and were to be thought lower because they appeared like a group of poor people trying to make a living. When the census was taken a gate was put on the town so no one could ever come back in and laugh at them. Being a part of Zoo Island changed Jose's life and made him no longer feel like he wasn't meant to be.