Gadzooks! Another book!

From The Spring Reading Challenge.

The Fight In the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement by Susan Ferriss & Ricardo Sandoval

There might be better written biographies of Cesar Chavez, and I’m sure at some point I’ll find one, but this might be the most comprehensive biography of a man and of a movement that I have read so far.

As I get more involved in my own union work, and as the time approaches where (someday soon, I hope), I’ll be teaching social studies rather than language arts, I want and need to learn more about American labor history. As part of that, I sought out my local library’s section of books related to the union movement and labor history and found it somewhat… wanting. Disappointing. Of the several books that have been published about the life and work of Cesar Chavez, this was the only one available, other than some very well done books for children and younger readers (which is a good sign). It isn’t great literature, but it sure isn’t dry and dusty history, either, and the authors – who compiled all this material to create a text intended to accompany a PBS documentary which I now have to hunt down and watch – also sprinkle throughout their own text essays by a number of different authors on subjects ranging from the Zoot Suit Riots to the use of dangerous pesticides on vineyards in the 1980s. We not only get Chavez’s life and struggle here, but the story of a movement and a people.

Cesar Chavez led the life of a modern American hero. His adherence to the theory and practice of non-violent revolutionary change should place him in the pantheon of such heroes as Gandhi and King. In my humble opinion, Chavez deserves a “day” more so than, say, that scoundrel Christopher Columbus. What I like about this book, besides the scope and sweep and depth of the research here, is the acknowledgement that above all else, Cesar Chavez was a man. Though sometimes saintly, he was not a saint. Though he strove always to be the best man and leader he could be, he was not perfect. He began his life as a very ordinary person who then became extraordinary, driven on by his commitment, his ideals, and his faith. However, this book does not place him on a pedestal. While reverent and respectful in its tone, the authors place Chavez’s feet firmly on the ground. More accurately, in the rich, brown soil of California, which was so liberally and tragically watered with the blood of the martyrs who died in the cause of fighting for the basic human rights of farm workers, and workers everywhere, under Chavez’s leadership.