Description
Yeoman, tillers of the soil, salt of the earth, family farmers, and the backbone of democracy: thus has the United States romanticized its farm owners since the founding of the nation. Yet, in the shadows of the same land there are those who have worked as the "hands" in agriculture. We have called them savages, three-fifths of a person, chattel, vagrants, Okies, wetbacks, illegals, and worse. Alternately, there is a language of pity, which we employ to lament their working conditions. At other times, they have no presence in the narrative we tell about farming at all, and they become the invisible hands that feed us. In every case, our language, and our society, have failed them. This project seeks to reconcile our farm laborers to their central place in our farm narrative both past and present. Building on over 30 years of work on immigration, agriculture, and formworkers, this work employs historical ethnography, textual analysis, and philosophy to examine both what is told and left out of our language, myth, and memory.
