Man of Fire: Selected Writings (Working Class in American History) - Softcover

Ernesto Galarza; Rodolfo Torres; Armando Ibarra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0252082583 ISBN 13: 9780252082580

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2017

Synopsis

Activist, labor scholar, and organizer Ernesto Galarza (1905–1984) was a leading advocate for Mexican Americans and one of the most important Mexican American scholars and activists after World War II. This volume gathers Galarza's key writings, reflecting an intellectual rigor, conceptual clarity, and a constructive concern for the working class in the face of America's growing influence over Mexico's economic system. Throughout his life, Galarza confronted and analyzed some of the most momentous social transformations of the twentieth century. Inspired by his youthful experience as a farm laborer in Sacramento, he dedicated his life to the struggle for justice for farm workers and urban working-class Latinos and helped build the first multiracial farm workers union, setting the foundation for the emergence of the United Farm Workers Union. He worked to change existing educational philosophies and curricula in schools, and his civil rights legacy includes the founding of the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). In 1979, Galarza was the first U.S. Latino to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, for works such as Strangers in Our Fields, Merchants of Labor, Barrio Boy, and Tragedy at Chualar.

About this title

Review:

 "Ernesto Galarza was a prescient analyst and powerful writer, a scholar, poet, and social activist whose work has profoundly influenced and interested so many. This book will be of use to activists who interrogate political economy and develop strategies that address inequities in class and race."--Patricia Zavella, author of I'm Neither Here nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty

"This outstanding compilation of the selected writings of Ernesto Galarza features an excellent introduction, despite the fact that relatively little is known about Galarza's private life other than what he reveals in his autobiography.  Highly Recommended."--Choice

From the Author:

Armando Ibarra is an assistant professor in the School for Workers at the University of Wisconsin-Extension. Rodolfo Torres is a professor of urban and regional planning and urban studies at the University of California, Irvine. His other books include Race Defaced: Paradigms of Pessimism, Politics of Possibility.Constructing Identities in Mexican American Political Organizations: Choosing Issues, Taking Sides

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0252082583
• ISBN 13: 9780252082580
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336