Ponder: Spare Parts

I became totally immersed in Spare Parts subtitled  four undocumented teenagers, one ugly robot, and the battle for the american dream. The underwater robotics aspect initially caught my interest since I am a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. But also the timeliness of the topic of undocumented immigrants, especially the young ones who know no other culture than the United States, was germane. In today's political climate, where the controversy continues to swirl around DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and border security, the story of these four Dreamers is to be seriously pondered. After reading the book, I went to a talk by the author Joshua Davis at my local library, and then watched the movie on Netflix. All three – book, talk, movie – are addressed in this post. 

THE BOOK
I chose to read Spare Parts by Joshua Davis ©2014  because it is featured in my local library's February program Livermore Reads Together 2019.

The library site outlines the book and lists art, music, science, poetry, etc. events in my home town relating to the theme of the book. Excerpting from the Livermore Reads Together 2019 site, the book is about:

In 2004, four Latino teenagers arrived at the Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Born in Mexico but raised in Phoenix, Arizona, the teens attended an underfunded public high school. No one had ever suggested to Oscar Vazquez, Cristian Arcega, Luis Aranda, or Lorenzo Santillan that they might amount to much, but two inspiring science teachers (Fredi Lajvardi and Allan Cameron) convinced these impoverished, undocumented kids from the desert who had never even seen the ocean that they should try to build an underwater robot.

And build a robot they did. Their robot wasn't pretty, especially compared to the rest of the competition. They were going up against some of the best collegiate engineers in the country, including a team from MIT backed by a $10,000 grant from ExxonMobil. The Phoenix teenagers had scraped together less than $1,000 and built their robot out of scavenged parts. This was never a level competition—and yet, against all odds, they won. But this is just the beginning for these four, whose story—which became a key inspiration to the DREAMers movement—will go on to include first-generation college graduations, deportation, bean-picking in Mexico, and military service in Afghanistan.

Most books I review are fiction so I need to change my approach for evaluating this non-fiction one. I completed it in two sittings, so fascinated and engaged I became with the journey to the competition and the afterward lives of these four young men.

Characters: There is little sense in discussing character development in a non-fiction work. The real life people are whoever they are, already developed, and it is up to the author to describe those aspects of them that are most interesting and revealing and relevant to the tale he is telling. These Mexican teenage boys, Luis, Lorenzo, Cristian, and Oscar, the four undocumented teens, may have similar backgrounds but they present very unique and disparate personalities and strengths. Joshua Davis does well to bring these out. I did not need to keep referring back to look up a character's name. I knew, by how each responded to problems and issues and by how each behaved, who he was. The two science teachers mentoring these boys were also truly themselves, each marching to the beat of his own drummer. And let us not forget Stinky, the one ugly robot, whose physical appearance and inner workings made a lasting impression as well.

Plot: In non-fiction, the storyline is what it is. But that is not to say that there cannot be tense moments and suspense even knowing at the start of the book what the outcome is – a rag tag team of four underprivileged kids beating a financially and educationally privileged MIT team and other similarly stiff competitors in an underwater robot national competition. Curiosity and worry as to how they get there provides enough drama to entice the reader to keep turning those pages. A review by Peter Carlson in The Washington Post describes Spare Parts as

A feel-good tale of scrappy underdogs beating long odds... A great American story.

Setting/Theme/Tone: How does one reconcile the seeming paradox of four boys from the desert competing in an underwater challenge? Simply! There may not be an ocean in Phoenix but there are pools! But another truly real captivating theme is the battle for the American dream. Due to their poverty, they were at an educational and financial disadvantage especially pitted against technologically savvy and well sponsored giants such as MIT. But there was a third undercurrent of unease. Because three of the four boys were not born in the United States, they could be deported back to Mexico at any moment. Crossing a state line to compete in subsequent qualifying contests was stressful each time because doing so made them vulnerable to scrutiny by immigration officials. The competition was in 2004; the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals did not come into being until June of 2015. Three team members had been born in Mexican towns: from south to north, Luis in Curenavaca, Lorenzo in Zitacuera, Oscar in Temosachic. Cristian had been born in Mexicali, Baja CA. The distance separating the furthest of them from UCSB was over 2200 miles – beyond the distance from Los Angeles to Mexico City.

Author Joshua Davis:

A movie was made based on the book Spare Parts. Even though I found the book much, much better than the movie, ironically The Internet Movie Database biography of Joshua Davis was the best one I located to tell of the author's eclectic background. 

A 2005 article Joshua Davis wrote for Wired Magazine, titled La Vida Robot, is an excellent overview and precursor of the Spare Parts book and includes several humorous snippets that also appear in the 2014 published book. What I found most relevant to this fifteen year old story from the book Spare Parts, is a Facebook link for a 2017 article Joshua wrote for Wired magazine about Trump and the Dreamers. For those interested in a follow-on of the four students, this Welcome Dreamers editorial is a good source.

THE TALK

Wednesday night February 20th, Frank and I thoroughly enjoyed a presentation by author Joshua Davis. The book had been published in 2014, ten years after the quartet (quintet if you count Stinky) had won first place in the 2004 Marine Advanced Technology Education Robotics Competition at UC Santa Barbara. The tone of the presentation was laid back and personal as Joshua began describing his path to a career of journalism. He then told of how he happened upon and agreed to tell the story of the Carl Haydn High School Robotics team of West Phoenix. The best part about the ambience of the presentation was that the team lead, Oscar, Skyped us, joining the audience via his presence on the front projection screen for a large portion of the talk. He was quite humble, almost self-deprecating as he responded to questions from the audience.

Oscar was asked to describe some of the anecdotal stories from the experience, add some personal insight, and give updates on where his other team members and teachers were now. They had kept in touch. I loved seeing him smile as he retold the moments when they were announced as first place winners. Even just moments before they were awarded first place, the four boys assumed a special additional creativity award they had been given was a "pity" prize. On reflection, he postulated that since they so little money for parts, they pretty much had to jury rig items on first principles. This necessity (being the mother of invention) made each and every one of the team members thoroughly understand the technical inner workings.

Joshua pointed out that when he was about to write the book he asked the boys if they were willing to admit their undocumented status. He would only do so with their mutual consent. By agreeing to let the author tell their whole story and reveal their immigration status in the book, three of them were putting themselves at risk of discovery and deportation. When the four boys agreed, Joshua Davis called it a Rosa Parks moment. The boys felt the issue was important enough that they were willing to expose themselves and have the whole story be told.

When a member of the audience asked Oscar how they had all been so brave, he answered quietly, gaze lowered, claiming at the time it did not seem as grand as a Rosa Parks moment – that analogy came from Joshua. Oscar stated he and other other team members ran risks every day due to their "illegal" presence in the United States. Even an activity so common place as driving a car, could be due cause for detection and deportation. They were used to living under that cloud of fear and so he made light of their consent to be fully open.

A fact not stated in the book, Joshua related that this win was not a fluke. The Robotics Team from Carly Hayden Community High School located in an impoverished, disreputable, even dangerous part of West Phoenix, went on to beat MIT again in 2005 and now has an internationally renowned Robotics Club. The audience spontaneously and enthusiastically clapped at that fact, Frank and me included. I leaned over and whispered to Frank. "Why am I clapping? I am an MIT Mechanical Engineer."

At the conclusion of the talk Joshua Davis would sign books. When I told him how much I had enjoyed the talk, I laughingly admitted that I clapped when Carly Hayden beat MIT again on 2005, even though both Frank and I were both alumni of MIT.

To my bemusement, I later saw that he had added this note above his signature.

This cover of the book and the version shown in the start of this post have the same content. I am not sure which is the first edition, but it does not really matter.

I give the book Spare Parts five stars out of five. It had well-defined likable characters, an intriguing topic, current social relevance, simple language, many points of suspense – and it was a quick read. Check it out. Do not overlook this book. The movie? Well, it is always better to read the book! But here is my take on the movie anyway.

THE MOVIE

The movie Spare Parts was released in 2015. The screen version took great license with the book. It kept the premise of the robotic contest and the boys names intact, but there were several subplot offshoots and several character deletions, character additions, and character portrayal that deviated from the novel. I got hung up on these inaccuracies/differences, even though I probably shouldn't have. There were love interests that were fabricated. The two teachers were combined into one and a fictional backstory was created for this melded teacher, played by George Lopez.

I thought the movie was mediocre. It satisfied my curiosity but I would rate the movie two stars out of five in my book rating which translates to "Ok, not great; some redeeming features; I finished it." I would give the movie a 4 in the IMDb movie rating scale.

At the talk Frank and I attended, Oscar shared that someone had asked him which actor played him in the movie. He shrugged and said he'd answered, "The one they called Oscar."