Book description
The coalfields of northern New Mexico are the setting for the
remembrances of six-year-old Matias Montaño, a fictionalized version
of the author's life in the last years of World War II. García writes
about ordinary coal-mining people as they struggle to make a living
and raise families, and about their heroism, joy for living, and their
belief in the value of education, hard work, and the American Dream.
For Matias, his brothers, friends, and the adults in their lives, the
poor living conditions did not interfere with their adventures and
activities, which included collecting scrap iron, picking
chokecherries, tracking deer, hunting rattlesnakes, and riding hand
cars down the railroad tracks. This book presents a fresh and richly
textured view of life in a mining town from the Hispanic viewpoint but
includes folklore and stories told by the town's many other ethnic
groups, among them Italian, Slavic, and Greek immigrants and African
Americans, all working together in support of the war effort and in
search of better lives.
Dr. Ricardo García has spent thirty-six years as an educator
beginning in Tierra Amarilla and Wagon Mound, New Mexico as a high
school English teacher. Since 1973, he has taught or served as an
administrator in various colleges and universities. Currently, he is a
Professor of Education in Teachers College at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a storyteller for the Nebraska Humanities Coucil
and author of a monthly feature story in the Raton Range on coal camp
life. His poetry has been published in New Mexico Magazine, and his
book, On the Way to San Francisco Bay, (Anchorage, Salmon Run Press,
2001) won the National Poetry Award for the year 2000. His other
professional education books are: Teaching in a Pluralistic Society
(Harpercollins, 1991); Teaching for Diversity (Phi Delta Kappa, 1998).
He has conducted seminars or told stories in 35 different states from
Alaska to Puerto Rico.
