The Harvest / La cosecha is the gathering of the complete short fiction of the late Tomás Rivera, the celebrated Chicano author of the classic …y no se lo tragó la tierra / …And the earth did not devour him. Framed within the Odyssean cycle of the migratory farm workers, Rivera’s stories are myths and parables which relate the universal themes of alienation, love and betrayal, man and nature, death and resurrection, and the search for community. Represented in laconic and poetic prose, Rivera’s characters become indelibly inscribed on the multicultural fabric of American literature.
“Rivera was most adept at taking a slice of real life, then telling the story as . . . a folk tale.”
—The Texas Observer
“[Rivera can] convert everyday episodes in the lives of ordinary people into small masterpieces of sparse yet often lyrical prose.”
—Western American Literature
“Julián Olivares brings together in The Harvest seven short stories by Rivera which dramatize just how much we lost when the author died suddenly in 1984 . . . The Harvest will benefit not only Rivera scholars, but the growing number of general readers who have come to realize that Tierra, while slim, is an extremely powerful piece of fiction.”
—The Texas Observer
TOMÁS RIVERA (1935-1984) was born to a family of migrant farm workers in the South Texas town of Crystal City. In spite of moving constantly to work the crops, Rivera managed to graduate from high school. He went on to obtain a degree in English from Southwest Texas State University. He then earned a master’s degree in Spanish literature and a doctorate in Romance languages and literatures. He became a university administrator, and in 1979 he was appointed chancellor of the University of California, Riverside, a position he held for five years until his sudden death in 1984.
