John Dunne's Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike - Essay Example

John Dunne’s Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike John Donne is a known English poet, humorist,lawyer, and member of the clergy in the Church of England. His work was noticed because it had sturdy, sensual technique and is characterized by sudden openings and different satires, sarcasms and disarticulations. His book, Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike that relies on forceful direct reports and interrogations maintains both its originality and hurry to illuminate an instant of extraordinarily momentous social upheaval.

Some of the themes depicted in Donne’s book include the Living Conditions of Itinerant Farm Workers, Labor Activism in the Central Valley and Racial Segregation. Therefore, in order to understand the logic behind his book, one should explore how these themes are discussed and portrayed in his book. Life for immigrant farm workers was extremely complex. Labor outworker usually appointed the workers. They recruited them out of the streets and leased them to individual growers. The immigrant works were forced to reside in labor encampments that were situated on the grower’s land.

However, not even the controllers of the immigrant farm workers accessed them. Nevertheless, entrance was merely by intruding or obtained consent from the grower, which was very implausible to happen. This indicates that under these circumstances, a strike was practically impractical. This meant that the California workers had no body to represent them in a meaningful manner. Additionally, there was no means of knowing whom the farm workers preferred to represent them. Besides that, nobody knew the number of workers employed in the grape farms or their living conditions.

On the other hand, there were no equipments to be applied in agriculture. This made the workers to toil in the hot sun for long hours harvesting various crops. Despite that, they were compensated only fifty cents for each container they harvested. Surprisingly, at the time of payments, the farm owners deducted money from the workers to compensate any water they drank as they worked, and because several workers were Mexicans or half casts of Americans and Mexicans, they knew little English which the farm owners took advantage of and defraud their wages.

1 Donne’s book has exposed the theme of labor activism in the Central Valley; the valley was regarded as the center of the nation. In this valley, work was done to give food to the metropolises of the state. Additionally, laborers reaped the yields of the territory, but they were reserved and utilized by the farm owners. Major cultivating of the California valleys commenced in the days of the tycoons, they provided the idea that suggested the need for development of California farming. This is because the land was available to be owned by anybody after the war with Mexico; however, owners were restricted purely by their own cleverness.

By means of all techniques of deceit, counterfeit, and subornment The United States took over California. During this time, eight hundred awards were conveyed. As a result, more than eight million acres of California land was transferred to the awarders. The defrayal of California led to the construction of the railroads, which in turn made the deceitful Mexican land grantors look like owners of the land. Thus, merging of the farms by United States resulted to diverse farm labors. This is whereby in all parts of the country, family ranches dominated and dependency was generally on the work of the grower and the family.

2 Racial segregation was another theme depicted in Donne’s book. All through the 1930s and 1940s, racism was all over California, for instance, in schools, farms, and urban centers. Eating places denied serving Mexican Americans. On the other hand, cinemas permitted them to assemble in particular parts. For example, Chavez a Mexican American was discriminated after joining the U.S Navy to battle in the Second World War, this made him to return to California to labor on the farms. Discrimination and deprived living conditions that immigrant were encountering prior to the war never transformed.

Therefore, Chavez due to the knowledge he had during childhood, he was determined to solve these issues and predicaments that immigrants faced. Overwhelmed with his ideas, Chavez was employed by Ross and started working for the CSO as a society coordinator. He assisted workers with their daily troubles, guided others on ways of becoming U.S. nationals, and persuaded them to be enrolled as voters. In 1958, Chavez was elected the leader of the CSO in California and Arizona.3 In conclusion, the year 1965 marked a turning point between the Filipino and Mexican American laborers.

They protested against farm owners within Delano, California and never went to work during this time. The strike resulted in the formation of social justice movement that assisted restructure the political affairs between the Latinos and Americans. Additionally, the strike enabled Mexican American leaders, for example, Cesar Chavez, join American politics especially in 20th century. Therefore, since it was originally published, John Gregory Dunne’s book, Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike, that relies on forceful direct reports and interrogations, maintains both its originality and hurry to illuminate an instant of extraordinarily momentous social upheaval.

Bibliography Dunne, John Gregory, Ted Streshinsky, and Ilan Stavans. Delano: the story of the California Grape Strike. Berkeley: University of California Press. 2008.