The Tortilla Curtain Lesson Plan

The Toritilla Curtain has become T.C. Boyle's most well-known and successful novel. The novel explores the complexities of middle-class American beliefs, and how those values relate to the debate over immigration that is currently raging in the United States. The novel also explores themes surrounding racism, xenophobia, class conflict, poverty, and the American Dream. The novel goes back and forth between two different story lines that continually intertwine--the perspective of the Mossbachers, an upper-middle-class white family living in an upscale housing development, and the Ricóns, a poverty-stricken immigrant couple with a baby on the way, trying to make ends meet. The...