Five Families Author:Oscar Lewis LA VIDA, — proves the culture of poverty. This time the author focuses on the daily life of the men, woman, and children of five Mexican families. His book is a warm portrait of human beings; at the same time it is a well-documented and authoritative presentation of a culture explosively in flux. — FIVE FAMILIES presents a cross-section of Mexic... more »o today. The author takes the reader into the homes and into the minds of the members of families in a small peasant village in the country, a slum tenement in Mexico City, a new working-class housing development, and an upper-class residential district.
"Fascinating in the intimacy of its research into family life, terrifying in its revelation of the cultural desolation that follows 'Westernization' of underdeveloped countries, and perhaps epoch-making for its new approach to ethnology....An astonishing performance....The reader will have to read it all to see that Oliver La Farge is not exaggerating in his Foreword when he calls the Castros'a family to dismay Chekhov, to stand Zola's hair on end.' "