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University of California Press

About the Book

With These Hands documents the farm labor system through the presentation of a collection of voices—workers who labor in the fields, growers who manage the multi-billion dollar agricultural industry, contractors who link workers with growers, coyotes who smuggle people across the border, union organizers, lobbyists, physicians, workers' families in Mexico, farmworker children and others. The diversity of stories presents the world of migrant farmworkers as a complex social and economic system, a network of intertwined lives, showing how all Americans are bound to the struggles and contributions of our nation's farm laborers.

About the Author

Daniel Rothenberg is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

Foreword-Robert Coles
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface: With These Hands

1. Farmworkers: I Earned That Name
2. Farmworkers: What Sort of Future Awaits us?
3. Growers: Somebody on Earth Has Got to Do This Job
4. Contractors: Between Workers and Growers
S. Pasando al otro lado: The U.S/Mexico Border
6. Slavery in the Fields
7. When Main Street Looks Like Little Mexico
8. Farmworker Politics: Some Measure of Protection
9. Farmworker Unions: A Sense of Their Own Power
10. Migrant Children: Tell Me What a Childhood Is
11. Back Home: Mexican Ranchos

The Space between These Hands

List of Photographs
Sources
Acknowledgments
Index

Reviews

"What makes this book so important is that it allows us to see into the lives of those who do the stoop labor to put that lovely salad on our tables. With These Hands is a unique and valuable documentary work that skillfully presents the voices of laborers and others, helping us to understand our connection to the world of America's farmworkers."—Studs Terkel