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Delaney Mossbacher
Kyra is Delaney’s wife and the mother of Jordan. Kyra is a realtor and is wholly dedicated to her work. She loves the high she gets when she sells a house, and is acutely aware of any potential threats to the value of her properties—including those she perceives to be posed by the immigrants, whom she sees as a blight on her community, decreasing property values. Of the novel’s four main characters, Kyra has the fewest sections dedicated to her perspective; as such, she is a less fully developed character than her counterparts. She is described as a driven, highly motivated person who is almost exclusively career-oriented. Her over-the-top concern of her own dogs, Sacheverell and Osbert, contrasts rather ridiculously with the callousness she shows toward other humans (specifically, the immigrants who come to the labor exchange in her suburb to look for work). Both of her dogs are eaten by coyotes, prompting her to obsess over the height of a fence around her yard that is meant to keep coyotes out; this fence thus becomes a direct parallel for the wall around Arroyo Blanco Estates, which is meant to protect the community from the vague threat they feel is posed by immigrants such as Cándido and América. Kyra exhibits many of the same tendencies toward racism as her husband and the other members of her community.
Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher Quotes in The Tortilla Curtain
The The Tortilla Curtain quotes below are all either spoken by Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher or refer to Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher. 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:
).
Part 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
Still, this congregation was disturbing. There had to be a limit, a boundary, a cap, or they’d be in Calabasas next and then Thousand Oaks and on and on up the coast till there was no real estate left. That’s what she was thinking, not in any heartless or calculating way—everybody had a right to live—but in terms of simple business sense […].
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Part 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
Kyra looked down at her plate as if uncertain how to go on. “Remember I told you about all those people gathering there on the streetcorners—day laborers?”
“Mexicans,” Delaney said, and there was no hesitation anymore, no reluctance to identify people by their ethnicity, no overlay of liberal-humanist guilt. Mexicans, there were Mexicans everywhere.
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Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher Quotes in The Tortilla Curtain
The The Tortilla Curtain quotes below are all either spoken by Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher or refer to Kyra Menaker-Mossbacher. 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:
).
Part 2, Chapter 1
Quotes
Still, this congregation was disturbing. There had to be a limit, a boundary, a cap, or they’d be in Calabasas next and then Thousand Oaks and on and on up the coast till there was no real estate left. That’s what she was thinking, not in any heartless or calculating way—everybody had a right to live—but in terms of simple business sense […].
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2, Chapter 3
Quotes
Kyra looked down at her plate as if uncertain how to go on. “Remember I told you about all those people gathering there on the streetcorners—day laborers?”
“Mexicans,” Delaney said, and there was no hesitation anymore, no reluctance to identify people by their ethnicity, no overlay of liberal-humanist guilt. Mexicans, there were Mexicans everywhere.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
