Analysis Of Mintz's Book 'Worker In The Cane'

Except using the analogy method to analyze the two cities in Caribbean, Mintz also include people’s real living story to enhance his research. For example, Worker in the Cane, a story of a Puerto Rican sugar can worker, Don Taso, his family and the village he lived. “Don Taso portrays his harsh childhood, his courtship and early marriage, his grim struggle to provide for his family” (Mintz 1974: 1). Although Worker in the Cane is not Mintz’s most famous book, it provided people a direct impression of ethnographic contact, and the detailed description and vivid storytelling of a human’s life explain the reason this book continuing appeal young anthologists.
The book quoted lots of Taso’s own words which vivid the story a lot. The book just

like a historic movie which dramatically shows sugar can workers’ lives and the changes taking place in Puerto Rico from a local people’s perspective. Taco’s story easily captures readers’ interest and strong attention of people’s live in Puerto Rico. Taco’s story is more like a huge amount of episodic style conversations which in different mood and content. Mintz claimed that “there was no attempt at psychoanalytic interviewing, and this book pretends to no profound psychological interpretation” (Mintz 1974: 4). In fact, the story that Taco talked about is not completed, however, the sense of its incompleteness provided readers a stronger sense of reality than some completed work and made the whole story more convinced. For example, when Taco talked about people who has intense family responsibilities to work during a strike by his sympathized words, people can feel the same sadness that Taco has and get attention on those people’s family pressure and Puerto Rico’s young marriage and family issue.