The University of Arizona Press
When Living Was a Labor Camp
"I write what I eat and smell," says Diana García, and her words are a bountiful harvest. Her poems color the page with the vibrancy and sweetness of figs, the freshness of tortillas, and the sensuality of language.
In this, García's first collection of poems, she takes a bittersweet look back at the migrant labor camps of California and offers a tribute to the people who toiled there. Writing from the heart of California's San Joaquin Valley, she catapults the reader into the lives of the campesinos with their daily joys and sorrows.
Bold, political, and familial, García's poems gift the reader with a sense of earth, struggle, and pride—each line filled with the sounds of agrarian music, from mariachi melodies to repatriation revolts. Embodied with such spirit, her poems rise with the convictions of power and equality
"[García's] dedication to observed reality and sensory experience shows up everywhere in this tasty volume." —San Diego Union Tribune
"Throughout the book it is eminently clear that García intimately knows the migrant worker life. She widens this view gracefully and lyrically to honor and evoke the voices of those on the margins, especially women, the 'other Marías.' A lovely book." —North American Review
"García's debut collection renders three generations worth of detached anger and small pleasures with an unerring eye." —Publishers Weekly
