The “Harvest of Shame” helped me see how far I have to go . . . somehow it is different than learning about similarly bad living conditions and entrenched injustice in our economy when it geographically located farther away, under governments I don’t call my own.

To pick one thing that stuck out the most, it is the lack of choice. I was reminded of briefly working with a woman who had less than five years of school, began farmwork and mothering at 15, and plans to continue for the rest of her life. The difference was that she lived in what she felt was “home,” with extended family around, ate some of her own produce and made decisions about her farmwork, and felt some measure of choice and autonomy in her decisions even if her material options were extremely limited. The young women we are learning about in Central Valley lack that autonomy of making practical choices, and support of home and family. The rancher whose wife started as a farmworker and now has a degree intrigued me: why was he using this story to justify himself? To convince himself his workers (will) have choices/freedom?

In “The Spirit Catches You,” Americans wanted to convince the Merced Hmong community that institutionalized American treatment is more effective than traditional medicine. The description of the healthcare path for a farmworker in California (Bade) made me realize that since communities with severely limited access to healthcare see only the part that deals with symptoms (emergency care), in their reality, American health care always fails members of those communities, pushing them away from utilizing it.