Desert Hawk Books

 

When Living Was a Labor Camp

Diana García

 

 

"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.

"In When Living Was a Labor Camp, there is no doubt Diana García knew 'the sweet-salt toil of harvesting the fields.' The result is a volume of poetry that examines and instructs about life on the margin--where, toiling in the vineyard, you continually find yourself in a row 'as far from the beginning as the end.'"
—Leroy V. Quintana, author of Great Whirl of Exile

"In Diana García's richly peopled and passionate landscapes, the lines are active, colorful, sassy. Sisters, grandmothers, mothers, 'otherMarias,' lovers, sons are painted with a fast, vibrant tongue. Even when Diana is documenting the lives of 'the anonymous poor' in migrant fields and in the barrios, she is able to make the harsh landscapes beautiful and transcendent."
—Marilyn Chin, author of The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty

A native of the San Joaquin Valley, Diana García was born in a migrant labor camp. Her poetry has appeared in such periodicals as The Kenyon Review and in the anthologies El Coro, Paper Dance, and Touching the Fire. She currently teaches at California State University, Monterey Bay, where she coordinates the Institute for Human Communication's Reading, Writing, and Critical Thinking Program.