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Hi everyone who read my post. I'm a brazilian writer and I've been thinking about setting my story in a rural location for a few months now. I want to write this book from the point of view of a latino teenager who migrated to the region a few years ago with her family. The city could be fairly receptive with immigrants, but there would be a number of afraid people with outsiders, and in addition, there would be a live past with indigenous communities.
In general, this story would address much questions such as immigration, xenophobia, support between minorities and there would be a little fantasy. Some people recommended me search about Yakima and for the little I researched maybe that's what I'm looking for, but I would like to know more.
How is the local culture? the positives and negatives of living in Yakima? places considered mystical? the local cuisine? schools? if there are problems with gangs or something like that? anything you guys believe that is essential for me to know, because I want to represent it as realistically and respectfully as possible.
Yakima has a rich history with the Latino culture, first as agricultural laborers and then slowly melting in to form the bulk of Yakima's local Latino/American culture. At present the entire Yakima valley is certainly a bastion of Latino-American history, and yes, gangs, crime, and poverty followed many a family to the valley where they've endured their share of resentment from the old established white farming communities.
Here's a good primer on the history of that Valley and the people who came to do seasonal farm labor, but stayed to enjoy the local prosperity of their work rather than returning to a profound poverty.
Hi everyone who read my post. I'm a brazilian writer and I've been thinking about setting my story in a rural location for a few months now. I want to write this book from the point of view of a latino teenager who migrated to the region a few years ago with her family. The city could be fairly receptive with immigrants, but there would be a number of afraid people with outsiders, and in addition, there would be a live past with indigenous communities.
In general, this story would address much questions such as immigration, xenophobia, support between minorities and there would be a little fantasy. Some people recommended me search about Yakima and for the little I researched maybe that's what I'm looking for, but I would like to know more.
How is the local culture? the positives and negatives of living in Yakima? places considered mystical? the local cuisine? schools? if there are problems with gangs or something like that? anything you guys believe that is essential for me to know, because I want to represent it as realistically and respectfully as possible.
And sorry for my english.
I'll bet a lot of money that you'll never see this response... BUT... as I began to read through your post...
almost nothing about Yakima and surrounds kept me from envisioning your creating something very authentic if you opt for Yakima as a central area.
It makes perfect sense that a latino would migrate to the Yakima area either from Latin America or from the southern USA.
I am... slightly askew when you use the word "rural"... but if you want to represent a more realistic likelihood, the family would move to a smaller community, most likely farther down in the vast Yakima Valley, using actual "Yakima" only when city-related necessities arise.
There is a considerable cross-section of American Indians and Latino Americans (along with not-yet-citizens from Latin America) in the region, and they definitely need to get along with one another. (and mind you, Yakima can't even correctly spell its own name!!. Obviously the city was named after the nearby vast reservation of the Yakama Indians who, some years back, discovered after many decades that they too had been incorrectly spelling their own name... so the tribe changed back to the true spelling, leaving the city high and dry)
Now if we were in central Texas, this area may prove indiscernible from a numbers of other places there, but consider that even a giant percentage of Canada's population is south of Yakima, and consider how relatively unique that makes the area.
Even Covid statistics do a lot to imply/suggest a good deal about daily life in the Yakima Valley, given the considerable outbreaks there due to so many people living under the same roof in many spots. A lot of decent people enduring what they must in order to make ends meet, many assisted by family when possible.
Yakima has certainly been evolving, and attempting to modernize over the past 30 years. Central Yakima has become far less hard-scrabble, and more modern businesses have moved in, with ancient and outdated mainstays having been shuttered at long last. But life farther down in the Yakima Valley (Wapato, Zillah, Toppenish, Granger, Sunnyside) retains much of its gritty past, only with more people putting pressures on the surrounding society.
IF you were in central Yakima right now, researching a setting for such a book, you might begin by recognizing a divide of a sort between the west side of Yakima, where perhaps the more affluent portion of the population remains, and the east side of Yakima, where areas are poorer. While I'm sure there is gang activity, and drug activity dotted around the map, I can't think of an area in the greater Yakima region that I wouldn't walk through alone.
I think that a similarly useful experience would be to visit a couple of nearby shopping malls or giant box stores, to observe just who is the clientele there.
Anyway, I'm not going to write anymore on the strong probability that you will never return to read it, but I would agree that the greater Yakima area is a terrific candidate for basing your book. In addition, there are quite a number of natural wonders not far away and they might add to any description of the setting.
Couple of comments. First, Yakima and Yakima County is a metro area and has been for decades.
It is surrounded by some of the first large scale agricultural lands that were developed in the western desert. Even in the 1970's the Yakima Valley had a large Mexican population that grew significantly with the start of mass illegal immigration in the 1990's.
Yakima Valley is not any different than other industrial agricultural areas in the American west with one exception.
That exception is the Mexican and Central American community and the Yakama Indian Nation. The two communities live side by side with their own set of unique problems. The dynamics and interaction between the two cultures would be an interesting issue for a writer to explore. Particular at school ages where both communities children interact with each other.
I immigrated to the US as a child in 1956, and basically lived in a black community for five years. It was a interesting experience, basically children discover ”color” in the 5th grade. I left at the point, for living as a poor kid in a upper middle class California suburb. That was JUST as interesting.
Couple of topics on immigration that have NOT been explored by writers.
The initial mass wave of Mexican immigration to the US was ”village specific”. That is, entire villages depopulated in Mexico and moved en mass to small towns in eastern Washington. A friend of mine that owned a orchard, said that his town was lucky....they got a ”good” village. Other towns were not so lucky, they ended with a ”bad” village and the crime and corruption that was local to Mexico suddenly appeared in small towns in America. Yakima was not lucky.
The other topic is the role of the internet and social media in mass migration throughout the world. I am amazed that people from the Congo and elsewhere, travel to Latin America and up through Mexico to get into the US. It was the internet that made America a realistic goal for people trying to reach America. Again, a topic not explored by writers to date.
So there are a couple of ideas for you to explore as a writer. I assume you speak Spanish and not Portuguese. Not sure what language you will be writing , but good luck in your endeavor.
I'll bet a lot of money that you'll never see this response... BUT... as I began to read through your post...
almost nothing about Yakima and surrounds kept me from envisioning your creating something very authentic if you opt for Yakima as a central area.
It makes perfect sense that a latino would migrate to the Yakima area either from Latin America or from the southern USA.
I am... slightly askew when you use the word "rural"... but if you want to represent a more realistic likelihood, the family would move to a smaller community, most likely farther down in the vast Yakima Valley, using actual "Yakima" only when city-related necessities arise.
There is a considerable cross-section of American Indians and Latino Americans (along with not-yet-citizens from Latin America) in the region, and they definitely need to get along with one another. (and mind you, Yakima can't even correctly spell its own name!!. Obviously the city was named after the nearby vast reservation of the Yakama Indians who, some years back, discovered after many decades that they too had been incorrectly spelling their own name... so the tribe changed back to the true spelling, leaving the city high and dry)
Now if we were in central Texas, this area may prove indiscernible from a numbers of other places there, but consider that even a giant percentage of Canada's population is south of Yakima, and consider how relatively unique that makes the area.
Even Covid statistics do a lot to imply/suggest a good deal about daily life in the Yakima Valley, given the considerable outbreaks there due to so many people living under the same roof in many spots. A lot of decent people enduring what they must in order to make ends meet, many assisted by family when possible.
Yakima has certainly been evolving, and attempting to modernize over the past 30 years. Central Yakima has become far less hard-scrabble, and more modern businesses have moved in, with ancient and outdated mainstays having been shuttered at long last. But life farther down in the Yakima Valley (Wapato, Zillah, Toppenish, Granger, Sunnyside) retains much of its gritty past, only with more people putting pressures on the surrounding society.
IF you were in central Yakima right now, researching a setting for such a book, you might begin by recognizing a divide of a sort between the west side of Yakima, where perhaps the more affluent portion of the population remains, and the east side of Yakima, where areas are poorer. While I'm sure there is gang activity, and drug activity dotted around the map, I can't think of an area in the greater Yakima region that I wouldn't walk through alone.
I think that a similarly useful experience would be to visit a couple of nearby shopping malls or giant box stores, to observe just who is the clientele there.
Anyway, I'm not going to write anymore on the strong probability that you will never return to read it, but I would agree that the greater Yakima area is a terrific candidate for basing your book. In addition, there are quite a number of natural wonders not far away and they might add to any description of the setting.
Well i think you lost the bet,but kidding aside, I'm very happy to receive answers. The information you brought me is very interesting and I even knew some things regarding the socioeconomic differences between the east and west areas of the city. And I believe you brought me some guidance on what I should research and delve into.
Well i think you lost the bet,but kidding aside, I'm very happy to receive answers. The information you brought me is very interesting and I even knew some things regarding the socioeconomic differences between the east and west areas of the city. And I believe you brought me some guidance on what I should research and delve into.
LOL
man I am quite stunned…
I wish somehow I could concisely put into words how Yakima has evolved since its days as
“the small town drug capital of America”
to a more viable place to live.
I wish I could assemble for you every past news story of
“The Yakima Hotel”
and maybe
“The Blue Banjo Saloon”, just to allude to some areas that might afford clues as to how the past became the present.
(clarity: both once central Yakima mainstays that have long since closed.)
Yakima also has unique geographic isolation:
Only serious exit over 25/30 miles off its main freeway out of town is to a
“Military Firing Range” (don’t take it).
There is also some beautiful geography not far away:
Yakima River Canyon beats the dull freeway by a longshot.
To the west lies mount Rainier over mountain passes which are in spots “closed all winter”.
Yakima is known as
“The Palm Springs of Washington”.
Modern conveniences include LARGE Mexican grocery stores which are fascinating to walk through, and I’d love to be reading about a RANDOM-ish character whose parents shopped there steadily while that character was raised in/near Yakima… with some ‘related’ details included.
“Family” is said to mean much more in many ways to the Latino community, but it would be such a good read to be able to illustrate that so outsiders could recognize the differences.
Yakima is so uniquely isolated, with even a valley with a small “gap” (literally called “Union Gap”) separating Yakima proper from the rest of its namesake valley.
Local sports heroes were the Stottlemyre family, who ran a sporting goods store in town.
A working class town where various cultures have been made to coexist in what seems to be a pretty decent way.
(hope these tidbits inspire you)
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