Burrito Man by Lulu Declare Analysis Essay Sample

In the short story ‘burrito man’, author Lulu Declare shows an aspect of food service workers you might not be able to see from the surface. Burrito man shows the life of a food vendor in the city who has built a connnection with his customers throughout the years. A story from the eyes of his daughter. While this story may be new in writing it's not a new subject of life. People who work jobs that are consistently seen as less classy are not appreciated as human beings behind their jobs. In this piece of writing we get to see the humanity in these parts of our community through Alex, his daughter. 

The story starts with a  flashback from take your child to work day. She doesn’t appreciate the hard work her dad puts in to support his family and his customers by waking up at 4 am and driving 3 hours before the light of day, but instead she complains and longs for a different life. One quote from pg 60 that shows how she's feeling is ‘Today is take your child to work day. I dont want to go. If only I could have gotten out of it. I wish I were Tania. Her dad's a doctor’s tech ------ not papi though. He's just a food vendor.’ Before she experiences his job first hand, Alex  is  unable to look beyond her own point of view and see how hard he works and how much he cares. Even though Alex loves her father, lives with him, and respects him as a father, she cannot see his life as a street vendor as equatable to his life as her dad. Instead she looks down on her dad for having a job she views as less successful. 

Later, while working with her dad at the food vending cart she starts to notice how he interacts with his customers. It's not the distant and reserved way so many other servers interact with people now but instead her dad shows love for what he does and character. As she’s serving one of his customers she sees a tip jar he has out. Pg 64 reads ‘I frown when I notice the handwritten sign on the tin ‘Alex’s college fund’ it reads. My mind races trying to find a way to hide the sign.’ She's seeing this part of him for the first time and yet she is still not able to open her eyes and appreciate her dad’s efforts and perseverance. You can see here that Alex's two versions of her dad melt together. She sees his friendly, open, personality that he brings home is the same version of himself that he is at work. She sees his humanity fill up his work life. Now as a reader I feel as though she has been demeaning him as a person this whole time. 

By the end of the story we see Alex now. We see a young woman viewing her childhood through new lenses. Lenses forced upon her by her dad's death. As she’s left to tell his beloved customers about his passing we see how she is still living with him even though he is there with her physicaly. On top of her honoring his hard work by working just as hard and going to college she now keeps the tin she once frowned upon as the line ‘I thought of the pink tin and smiled. It has a place of honor in my room now.’ on pg 68 reads. We know that one day stuck with her and we can hope she is not as quick to put down someone as dedicated and aspirational as her father was. 

Through the beginning of the story it ceased to enlighten me. It was easy to feel as though the story was repetitive in relation to many readers' lives and because of that it didn’t hold value. Now I see how that one aspect of it is so incredibly important because of the fact that it’s integrated in many readers' lives. The thing is we’ve all been Alex in some way. We’ve all had moments where we deem someone’s job as less important than others, maybe subconsciously. Whether those people are our parents or an unknown street vendor or your local Dunkin Donuts worker, those ideas are harmful and only uphold classism in our own minds. While you may have been Alex you may not have been the reader. You may not have had the chance to change in this way because of first hand experience. You may not have seen people who you pass everyday in this light. While there is a heartwarming story of daughterly love, under that lies writing of assumptIon and misunderstanding. Lulu Declare’s ‘burrito man’ aims to hold love and hardwork above jobs that are seen as superior and shows how truly meaningful someone’s life can be, even if it is not viewed that way from the surface.