Minority children are often thought to lack an achievement orientation. This paper discusses the home and community contexts of Latina/o immigrant children in a low-income community in Southern California, to demonstrate how sociocultural factors interact to produce motivation. Findings reveal that even among demographically similar families, a diverse set of constraints and affordances are at play which significantly impact students achievement orientations toward literacy and schooling. Further, findings indicate that the families' daily struggles to negotiate within a linguistically and culturally unfamiliar environment make the importance of literacy--particularly English literacy--quite transparent to children. (Contains 37 references and 2 tables of data.) (Author/RS)