New book spotlights San Antonio pecan shellers strike
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The cover of "The Pecan Sheller." Image: Courtesy of Lerner Publishing Group
A local author hopes her new book, a fictionalized story of the San Antonio pecan shellers strike, reaches school-aged children who might not otherwise know about the historic movement.
Why it matters: Author Lupe Ruiz-Flores aims to humanize the Latinas who helped spur a landmark law setting federal minimum wage and overtime pay standards — especially when such stories are threatened by book bans in Texas and across the nation.
State of play: "The Pecan Sheller," released by Lerner Publishing Group this month, features a fictional teenage girl in San Antonio who wants to become a writer, but has to drop out of school to shell pecans to help her family. She eventually joins the real-life strike for better wages and safer working conditions.
The latest: Ruiz-Flores will present the book, aimed at kids in the fifth through eighth grades, at 1:30pm on Saturday at the San Antonio Book Festival.
Flashback: In January 1938, around 12,000 pecan shellers — mostly Hispanic women — began a strike in San Antonio that lasted three months.
- Employees often worked more than 10 hours a day, seven days a week for $2 to $3 weekly pay.
- When companies decreased wages, Emma Tenayuca of the Texas Workers Alliance led a strike.
- The workers eventually won higher pay, clearing the way for the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 — a bedrock labor law that established a minimum wage.
Zoom in: Ruiz-Flores grew up in San Antonio knowing her mom shelled pecans as a teenager and didn't get to finish high school. But it wasn't something they discussed, and Ruiz-Flores never learned about the strike in school.
- In 1999, when she read that Tenayuca had died, she thought of her mom. Ruiz-Flores interviewed her mother and used bits of her personal history in the new fictionalized book.
- Unlike the main character in her book, Ruiz-Flores' mother did not actually join the strike.
What they're saying: Hispanic history is often "put aside, and people don't know about it," Ruiz-Flores tells Axios. "I just want (children) to know what happened."
- It's important that students learn about local history through personal stories, not just in a textbook, she adds.
- "Especially Latinos, Mexican American children, we need to let them know that we had a part in the history of the United States," Ruiz-Flores says.
Yes, but: Ruiz-Flores, who says she hopes kids read her book in school, worries it could be banned.
The big picture: Texas is one of the top states in the country for the number of book titles it has challenged in public schools and libraries, according to the American Library Association.
- This year, lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 13, which would allow parents to see what their children are checking out of their school library, as well as create councils to recommend books to be added or removed from libraries.
- The bill passed the Texas Senate last month and now heads to the House.