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Mattie
A Guatemalan refugee, Estevan is a highly educated man who was forced to flee his home in Guatemala when the war there led to the persecution of teachers (which he was). He and his wife, Esperanza, had their daughter Ismene taken from them in Guatemala but he remains hopeful that they can rebuild their life in the United States. Taylor falls in love with his quiet grace, though he never strays from his wife and she does not seek to get him to. He does help Taylor gain legal custody of Turtle by posing as Turtle’s biological father despite the high risk of speaking to public officials due to his own undocumented status in the US. Estevan is both strong and sensitive, and seems to embody the characteristics of what the novel sees as the ideal man.
Estevan Quotes in The Bean Trees
The The Bean Trees quotes below are all either spoken by Estevan or refer to Estevan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7
Quotes
This whole conversation had started with a rhyme he used to help his students remember how to pronounce English vowels…Lou Ann and I had already told him three or four times that he spoke better English than the two of us combined.
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Chapter 8
Quotes
“You are poetic, mi’ija.”
“What’s miha?”
“Mi hija,” he pronounced it slowly.
“My something?”
“My daughter. But it doesn’t work the same in English. We say it to friends. You would call me mi’ijo.”
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Chapter 9
Quotes
“You think you're the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too.”
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Chapter 14
Quotes
“A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.”
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Get the entire The Bean Trees LitChart as a printable PDF.
Estevan Quotes in The Bean Trees
The The Bean Trees quotes below are all either spoken by Estevan or refer to Estevan. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 7
Quotes
This whole conversation had started with a rhyme he used to help his students remember how to pronounce English vowels…Lou Ann and I had already told him three or four times that he spoke better English than the two of us combined.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8
Quotes
“You are poetic, mi’ija.”
“What’s miha?”
“Mi hija,” he pronounced it slowly.
“My something?”
“My daughter. But it doesn’t work the same in English. We say it to friends. You would call me mi’ijo.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9
Quotes
“You think you're the foreigner here, and I’m the American, and I just look the other way while the President or somebody sends down this and that . . . to torture people with. But nobody asked my permission, okay? Sometimes I feel like I'm a foreigner, too.”
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14
Quotes
“A human being can be good or bad or right or wrong, maybe. But how can you say a person is illegal? You just can't. That's all there is to it.”
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
