Inspired by the author's own childhood, the story is narrated by a seven-year-old farm boy named Luke Chandler, who lives in the cotton fields with his parents and grandparents. The Chandlers farm eighty acres that they rent, not own, and when the cotton is ready, they hire a truckload of Mexicans and a family from the Ozarks to help harvest it. Over six weeks, as they pick the cotton, Luke finds himself keeping secrets that not only threaten the...

In the 1960s and '70s, Cesar Chavez and farmworker activists allied with musicians and artists to help build a movement called "La Causa". A Song for Cesar tells the story of that alliance using first-person accounts of artists, musicians, members of Chavez's family, and other key figures of the movement. Inspired by the spirit of the thousands of farmworkers who struggled for justice alongside labor leaders Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry...

Their only crime was to be born poor. Their only chance lay in their hearts. They rise every morning with the sun and work the fields all day. A story of a simple family, a family that worked hard, loved each other and hoped their hard work would produce a better life for them. And in the eyes of the son, lay that hope that allows a man to rise beyond his circumstances and like so many others, remain trapped inside a fading American dream.

This novel is about a teenage girl, Ann Holmes, who claims to see the Virgin Mary. A sixteen-year-old runaway, Ann is an itinerant mushroom picker who lives in a tent. But on a November afternoon, in the foggy woods of North Fork, Washington, the Virgin comes to her, clear as day. Father Collins -- a young priest new to North Fork -- finds Ann disturbingly alluring. But it is up to him to evaluate -- impartially -- the veracity of Ann's sightings:...

These stories follow a migrant family through their circuit, from picking cotton and strawberries to topping carrots-- and back again-- over a number of years.

"We Had Our Reasons is a collection of poems created by Ricardo Ruiz in collaboration with other members of his Mexican farm community in Eastern Washington. The poems, vivid and pointed, guide the reader through the thoughts and struggles that come with the decision to leave one's home in Mexico, and travel to this remote, rural community of the United States. Through the book access is provided to readers; stories that have gone untold for generations...

""Viva La Huelga! Viva La Causa!" Discover the true story behind Cesar Chavez and the Delano Grape Strike, as he and the National Farm Workers Association set out on an incredible three-hundred-mile protest march in support of farmworkers' rights."--

From the Publisher: This second volume in The Library of America's authoritative edition of John Steinbeck features his acknowledged masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Written in an incredibly compressed five-month period, the novel had an electrifying impact upon publication in 1939, unleashing a political storm with its vision of America's dispossessed struggling for survival. It continues to exert a powerful influence on American culture, and has...

"What would we learn from each other if we had no fear, if there were no boundaries, no lines in the sand? As a society, we would be hard-pressed to know because we often lack the courage to do what it takes to find out. A dynamic group of migrant youth in Mount Vernon, Washington, are willing to try. They want you to understand what it feels like to walk in their shoes -- shoes caked in mud from the fields, shoes scrubbed daily so they will last,...

A young Mexican-American boy's coming of age amid the poverty and adversity he and his family face as migrant farm workers in the 1950s.