Earth angels: migrant children in America

Abstract

Every generation or so, we are served a compelling reminder of migrant farmwork and of the men, women, and children whose daily hardships put the food on our tables. Now to the ranks of John Steinbeck, Dorothea Lange, James Agee, Walker Evans, and Edward R. Morrow, add Nancy Buirski. Nancy Buirski traversed the country for four years to create this book, a sensitive portrait of a forgotten society. Her subject is the unique lives of those she has photographed: migrant farmworker children. They are the children caught in a life of poverty and backbreaking work whose moves from place to place leave them lacking in self-confidence and lagging behind in school. at sunrise, many can be found in the fields, where they are exposed to dangerous pesticides as they work. At day's end, exhausted, they go home to substandard shacks. The children in these pages are appealing and heroic and not easily forgotten. It is not often these days that pictures can make us think. Buirski's elegant and interpretive photographs show us the private realities as well as the social realities of these unchampioned children and let us see what is happening to the thousands of underage youngsters working today in America's farms.--From jacket flap