"I wanted to document, somehow, the strength of those people that I had known . . . when the migrant worker was living without any kind of protection."
Tomás Rivera was a Mexican American author, poet, and educator. He was born in Texas to migrant farm workers, and worked in the fields as a young boy. However, he achieved social mobility through education—earning a degree at Southwest Texas State University, and later a Doctor of Philosophy degree (PhD) at the University of Oklahoma—and came to believe strongly in the virtues of education for Mex
"…And I was only concerned about the migrant worker, the people I had known best. I had been a migrant worker. So I began to see that my role—if I want to call it that—would be to document that period of time, but giving it some kind of spiritual strength or spiritual history."
"When people asked what I wanted to be, Id tell them a writer. They were surprised or indifferent. If people dont read, what is a writer?"