Farm Workers in Fact and Fiction
Explore the world of farm workers through captivating fiction and real-life stories. Discover top books that delve into their lives, struggles, and triumphs in this curated list of farm worker literature.
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--and the Earth did not devour him
by Tomás Rivera
For use in schools and libraries only. Examines in English and Spanish the lives of migrant workers moving from south Texas up through the Plains, and the experiences of all ages and sexes
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Tomas and the Library Lady
by Pat Mora
A Common Core Exemplar Text by an award-winning author-illustrator team Tomás is a son of migrant workers. Every summer he and his family follow the crops north from Texas to Iowa, spending long, arduous days in the fields. At night they gather around to hear Grandfather's wonderful stories. But before long, Tomás knows all the stories by heart. "There are more stories in the library," Papa Grande tells him. The very next day, Tomás meets the library lady and a whole new world opens up for him. Based on the true story of the Mexican-American author and educator Tomás Rivera, a child of migrant workers who went on to become the first minority Chancellor in the University of California system, this inspirational story suggests what libraries--and education--can make possible. Raul Colón's warm, expressive paintings perfectly interweave the harsh realities of Tomás's life, the joyful imaginings he finds in books, and his special relationships with a wise grandfather and a caring librarian. This book has been selected as a Common Core State Standards Text Exemplar (Grades K-1, Read-Aloud Stories) in Appendix B
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Calling the Doves
by Juan Felipe Herrera
The author recalls his childhood in the mountains and valleys of California with his farmworker parents who inspired him with poetry and song.
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Niño de Cabeza
by Juan Felipe Herrera
The author recalls the year his parents settled down in the city so that he could go to school.
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La Mariposa
by Francisco Jiménez
Because he can only speak Spanish, Francisco, son of a migrant worker, has trouble when he begins first grade, but his fascination with the caterpillar in the classroom helps him begin to fit in.
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Esperanza Rising (Scholastic Gold)
by Pam Muñoz Ryan
Esperanza and her mother are forced to leave their life of wealth and privilege in Mexico to go work in the labor camps of Southern California, where they must adapt to the harsh circumstances facing Mexican farm workers on the eve of the Great Depression.
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Elegy on the Death of César Chávez
by Rudolfo A. Anaya
The heroic life of labor and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez greatly influenced the political and creative thinking of famed Chicano novelist Rudolfo Anaya. After Chavez' death in 1992, Anaya wrote this poem eulogizing the man and his life's work. Echoing Shelley's elegy on the death of John Keats, the poem expresses the grief of la gente, but closes by calling all peoples together to continue the non-violent struggle for freedom and justice. The book--endorsed by the Cesar Chavez Foundation--includes an essay by Anaya detailing the effect that Chavez had on his own vision and a chronology of Chavez' life. Powerful super realistic illustrations by Gaspar Enriquez bring home the significance of Cesar Chavez to the American cultural landscape. "Cesar Chavez' accomplishments in fighting for the rights of farm workers, civil rights, environmental justice, and non-violence stand next to two of the 20th century's greatest leaders--Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."--Carlos Santana Rudolfo Anaya (his classic novel Bless Me, Ultima has 1,000,000-plus in print) has earned international acclaim for his skillful mingling of realism, fantasy and myth while exploring the experiences of Hispanics in the American Southwest. Besides being the author of numerous novels and children's books, Mr. Anaya has been called "the godfather of Chicano literature" and "un hijo del pueblo" for his work as an activist for the literature of his people and his region. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Artist Gaspar Enriquez is nationally known for his super-realistic, airbrush paintings of young men and women from the barrios of his hometown El Paso. Using the same technique, he collaged images of Cesar Chavez, farm workers, police, newspaper article, fields of grapes and icons of La Raza and Aztlan to create the ambiance of the life and times of this hero.
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César Chávez
by Richard Griswold del Castillo
A simple biography of the man who worked to win fairer treatment of the migrant farm workers in California in the 1960s and to establish the United Farm Workers union.
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Under the Feet of Jesus
by Helena Maria Viramontes
A moving and powerful novel about the lives of the men, women, and children who endure a second-class existence and labor under dangerous conditions as migrant workers in California’s fields. “Viramontes depicts this world with sensuous physicality...working firmly in the social-realist vein of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.”—Publishers Weekly One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years At the center of this powerful tale is Estrella, a girl about to cross the perilous border to womanhood. What she knows of life comes from her mother, who has survived abandonment by her husband in a land that treats her as if she were invisible, even though she and her children pick the crops of the farms that feed its people. But within Estrella, seeds of growth and change are stirring. And in the arms of Alejo, they burst into a full, fierce flower as she tastes the joy and pain of first love. Pushed to the margins of society, she learns to fight back and is able to help the young farmworker she loves when his ambitions and very life are threatened in a harvest of death. Infused with the beauty of the California landscape and shifting splendors of the passing seasons juxtaposed with the bleakness of poverty, this vividly imagined novel is worthy of the people it celebrates and whose story it tells so magnificently. The simple lyrical beauty of Viramontes’ prose, her haunting use of image and metaphor, and the urgency of her themes all announce Under the Feet of Jesus as a landmark work of American fiction. Winner of the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature Selected as the Univesity of Oregon's 2019 Common Reading book
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Dolores Huerta (Latinos in American History) (Latinos in American History)
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No summary available.
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Radio Man : a Story in English and Spanish
by Arthur Dorros
As he travels with his family of migrant farmworkers, Diego relies on his radio to provide him with companionship and help connect him to all the different places in which he lives.
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Macho!
by Victor Villaseñor
From Victor Villase-or, author of the critically acclaimed bestsellerRain of Gold, comes the stunning story of a young man's coming of age—a novel that captures the cadences and color, passion and pride of the Mexican-American experience. Roberto Garcia was only seventeen. But he already had big dreams of freedom, respect, money, familia. With ambition to burn and a passion to prove his manhood, Roberto took the dangerous journey north, crossing the Mexican border to pick fruit in the golden fields of California. There, a good man could make more money in a week than in a whole year in the mountains of Michoacan. Nothing could have prepared Roberto for the jammed boxcars and bolted trucks carrying migrants through burning deserts to fields of dreams. But he was determined to become a norte-o, coming home with a family to save and a score to settle, no longer a boy, but a man. At once raw and powerful, poetic and heartbreaking,Macho!brings to life the brutality of migrant labor, Cesar Chavez's efforts to unionize the workers, and a vivid portrayal of the immigrant experience as seen through the eyes of a young man who saw it all.
