Wings Press

• Bestsellers / Recent Prize Winners
• New Releases
• Whitebird Chapbook Series
• Complete Index
• Back List Guide
• Limited & Signed Editions
• Wholesale Information

• Authors Index
• Submission Information

• Home
• Company Background
• About Bryce Milligan
• Contact Information
• Premio Poesia Tejana Award

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Join Our Mail List

Critical Praise for That's Not Fair!

• The title of this bilingual biography echoes the theme of the life of a legendary Mexican-American activist in Texas during the 1920s and 1930s. The story moves from Tenayuca's childhood introduction to the poverty and unfair treatment of Mexican Americans living in her hometown of San Antonio to her increasing awareness of the injustice they suffered, and ultimate fight for their civil rights. Their plight made her angry: "She saw so many people go to work when it was still dark and not come home again until late at night. Many worked so many hours that they were coughing and sick, and still they did not earn enough to feed their children." In 1938, at the age of 21, she led a successful strike of 12,000 pecan shellers whose pitiful wages had been cut from six cents to three cents an hour. In an afterword, which includes photographs of Tenayuca, the rest of her story is related: jailed many times, forced to move, she eventually worked her way through college and returned later to San Francisco as a reading teacher for migrant children. Ybáñez's striking illustrations, framed by pecan-tree branches, are reflective of traditional Mexican mural art, with bold colors and simple shapes. An important book celebrating the struggle for justice and civil rights.

  — Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI

Reviews

• In the 1920s and 1930s, the pecan shellers of San Antonio, Texas, were some of the lowest-paid workers in the nation. They were all Mexican-Americans, who had fled the revolution in their home country. Pecan shellers worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for as little as six cents a pound. In addition, they had to work in dusty, closed rooms. This made many of them ill. And then, in 1938, their wages were cut in half. They needed someone to be a voice for them, someone both brave and caring. They needed a hero. A young woman, barely twenty-one, answered their call. Her name was Emma.

  But Emma Tenayuca was not born a hero of the poor. That's Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo! tells how the seeds of Emma's awareness and activism were sown when she was very young.. This story of courage and compassion shows how each of us, no matter how young, can help to make the world more fair for everyone.

  The Story

  In the 1920s, in San Antonio, Texas, a young girl took a long look around her and decided that life is not fair to some people. She began to do things to change that. She taught other children to read, and she learned the value of sharing what little she had with those who had even less.

  Just a few years later, barely out of her teens, Emma Tenayuca led 12,000 poor workers – the pecan shellers – in their historic strike for fair wages and improved working conditions.

  Historians regard this as the first successful large-scale act in the Mexican-American struggle for civil rights and justice. No less than a legend in her own time, she is now an honored figure in Mexican-American history. Internationally-recognized Chicana poet Carmen Tafolla, a long-time friend of Emma, and Emma's niece, lawyer Sharyll Teneyuca, tell how the young Emma learned that positive action is the way to justice in this, the first book ever – for children or adults – about Emma Tenayuca. San Antonio artist Terry Ybáñez based her illustrations on historical photographs of Emma and San Antonio, and on her own experiences. She surrounds her pictures with autumn pecan tree limbs, and the many-hued blues of the south Texas sky.

• Emma Tenayuca Gets Her Due

  National Catholic ReporterAugust 22, 2008

  Workers Alliance leader Emma Tenayuca, with clenched fist in the air, speaks to crowd outside San Antonio City Hall following a parade protesting scarcity of Works Progress Administration jobs in 1937.Hers was a household name in Depression-era South Texas, and you either loved her or hated her. Emma Tenayuca roused admiration for her work on behalf of workers' rights or stirred hatred for her politics and union organizing. At the height of her fame, the young woman, barely out of her teens, convinced 12,000 pecan shellers threatened by a 50 percent pay cut to walk off their jobs. Most of them were Mexican and Mexican-American women making little more than $2 a week in cramped, dusty rooms without toilets or running water.

  Their strike is considered the first successful action in the Mexican-American struggle for economic, social and political justice. "She came way before César Chávez, way before Dolores Huerta, way before Martin Luther King Jr., way before the civil rights movement," said Chicana author and poet Carmen Tafolla. "She was a woman people attempted to write out of history," she said. "We're writing her back in."

  Ms. Tafolla, a friend of the late labor activist and educator, and Sharyll Teneyuca, a niece of Emma Tenayuca, who spells her name differently, have coauthored a children's book, That's Not Fair! Emma Tenayuca's Struggle for Justice, published by Wings Press. In 40 pages, it tells of Ms. Tenayuca's life, not as an organizer, orator or leader but as a girl whose sharp mind and compassion for others sows the seeds of activism. In vignette after vignette, the authors tell of Emma's passion for books, her observations of poverty and illiteracy and her grandfather's role as father and mentor.

  That's Not Fair! opens with pecan-colored pages and showcases illustrations by San Antonian illustrator Terry Ybañez. Each page is bordered by pecan trees. The children's book, published in time for the 70th anniversary of the history-making pecan shellers' strike, is the writing team's effort to reclaim Emma Tenayuca's place in history. It's the first-ever book on the labor activist and the latest in a wave of work about her.

  Since her death in 1999, her small figure, clenched fist in the air, has been reproduced on murals and exhibits. A corrido, or Mexican narrative song, was written about her, and her portrait has been painted by several artists, including Robert Shetterly of Maine, who included Emma Tenayuca in his "Americans Who Tell the Truth" portrait series. Among his other portraits are those of environmentalist Rachel Carson and author Walt Whitman. Ms. Tenayuca's life has been documented on film and mounted on the stage.

  Why all these moves to tell her story? Ms. Tafolla and others say it's because her story remains largely unknown outside San Antonio, even though she came before so many other civil rights leaders. "Emma was a brilliant and eloquent orator, organizer and human being who cared so deeply about the injustice others suffered," Ms. Tafolla said. "A lot of people are known in history for fighting against injustice that affected them directly. Emma fought for injustices that never affected her."

  "She had a spiritual mission in life, I'm convinced," Ms. Tafolla said. "She was a sensitive person who couldn't bear to see human suffering," said her niece, a lawyer in San Antonio. "And the injustices against the poor then were so pervasive." Ms. Tenayuca's story is also compelling for her controversial but short-lived membership in the Communist Party. She was blacklisted, received death threats and was forced out of town. When Emma Tenayuca died at 82 of Alzheimer's disease, Ms. Tafolla remembers feeling enraged "for all the lost opportunities to make use of a genius. We never really tapped her at her best."

  Sharyll Teneyuca said that during the Great Depression, when so many people were starving and scratching out a living, her aunt "used the gifts that she had: her intelligence, her voice, her ability to reach people." To tell that story, Ms. Tafolla and Ms. Teneyuca are working on two other books.

  A Tenacious Spirit

  Emma Tenayuca was born in 1916 into a large, devout Catholic family. As one of 11 children, she was sent to live with her grandparents on San Antonio's West Side, still predominantly Mexican-American but then receiving thousands of refugees from the Mexican Revolution, many accustomed to political involvement, unionizing and organizing. Her grandfather, Francisco Zepeda, was a major influence on Emma's life, taking her to San Antonio's Plaza del Zacate, where exiles and political figures gathered to discuss politics, hear grievances and read newspapers.

  The experience served as a flash point for Emma, a good student who spent a lot of time in libraries and around books. Her obituary in the San Antonio Express-News said she read Tolstoy and Marx by the time she was 15. As a high school student, she debated the late Congressman Henry B. Gonzalez, who said sparring with her required tenacity. Even as a young person, she had people coming to her for help because she spoke English and Spanish. "She was their voice," Ms. Tafolla said. In interviews with about 80 people who knew her, one common experience surfaced: Emma Tenayuca always recommended a book to them, the authors said.

  While the Great Depression devastated an entire nation, Ms. Tafolla said, the poverty Mexican Americans in South Texas experienced was extreme. It was coupled with the city's high rates of tuberculosis.

  The civil rights abuses were extreme, too. Mexican-American activists in Texas, then Democraticcontrolled, looked for political alternatives, Ms. Tafolla said. While her friend Richard Sanchez, now in his 90s, joined the Republicans, Emma Tenayuca joined the communists."Here was the Communist Party's platform at the time," Ms. Tafolla said. "Social Security, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, unions, the right to a weekend, all the things we take for granted."

  But her affiliation might not have been the only fact fueling the hatred. She was tough, relentless in her pursuit of justice, and a white, male establishment wasn't quite ready for that.

  Emma Tenayuca and Homer Brooks' wedding portrait in 1937Ms. Tafolla says part of the animosity Ms. Tenayuca faced was due to her brief marriage to state Communist Party leader Homer Brooks. "She dared to marry a white man. They just hated her. The interesting thing is that some of the tremendous anger dissipated after they divorced." Ms. Tenayuca never remarried but had a son in California.

  Her first strike work came at age 16, when she joined a picket line against the Finck Cigar Co. She also worked as a salesgirl and elevator operator, but her real work was with the Workers' Alliance of America. She led 10 of its chapters. In the late '30s, when San Antonio supplied more than half of the nation's pecans and the Southern Pecan Shelling Co. had more than 120 factories throughout the city, it announced wages would be halved. "These people were already starving, and they were being asked to live on half," Ms. Tafolla said.

  "She had to be an incredibly persuasive person to talk them into a strike," Ms. Tafolla added. "There were 12,000 shellers. It was the city's main industry. She was voted strike director at 22. She negotiated with owners. She inspired people. She was fearless. In less than two months, they had won the strike."

  A Target of Hatred

  The shellers' victory was bittersweet. Two years later, the pecan industry, faced with a minimum wage law requiring pay of 25 cents an hour, turned to machines. Filmmaker Anne Lewis, who's doing a documentary on Emma Tenayuca, says the reality was the industry already had the machinery. But people were cheaper.

  Ms. Lewis' film will depict the police's use of tear gas on strikers as well as mass arrests and strike-breaking efforts. Ms. Tenayuca was the face of that movement and called la capitana, or captain, by strikers. But to others, "she was the devil incarnate," said Ms. Tafolla. "Her name was a household word in San Antonio. It was in the newspaper every day. A friend would tell her, 'I have to read the paper to find out if you are in or out of jail.' " The hatred exploded in 1939 in the infamous Municipal Auditorium riot in which 5,000 people, many veterans, some Catholic clergy and even members of the Ku Klux Klan gathered in front of the building where 150 members of the Communist Party were meeting. The angry mob used bricks and rocks to make their point.

  Ms. Tenayuca's obituary in the San Antonio Express-News said that her politics cost her her Catholic friends, as the church was staunchly anticommunist at the time. Death threats followed for Ms. Tenayuca, and she couldn't get a job in San Antonio. She moved to Houston first and worked under her middle name, Beatrice, and her grandmother's birth name, Giraud. "But her reputation would catch up with her," Ms. Tafolla said, "or she'd speak up." Ms. Tenayuca eventually moved to California and earned a degree from San Francisco State University.

  She tried to join the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps, or WAAC, but was rejected. No reason was given, but Ms. Tenayuca always believed it was her communist past. The FBI kept a file on her, Ms. Tafolla said. Ms. Tenayuca did return to San Antonio in the late '60s. She kept a low profile and earned a master's degree at Our Lady of the Lake University. Her later years were spent teaching migrant children to read. She lived long enough to enjoy new-found accolades as her story, long buried, was unearthed.

  Activists and fans began to retell it, and she started to rack up awards and tributes. That's Not Fair! is the first book Ms. Tafolla and Ms. Teneyuca decided to tackle.Unlike most children's picture books, this one is not fable but fact. "They are stories Emma told," Ms. Tafolla said. All but one of its scenarios actually happened. "It's about fighting injustice," Ms. Tafolla said, and it's aimed for children ages 6 and up. The book's pecan tree borders change throughout the book to reflect the seasons, Ms. Tafolla said. "At the end, the leaves of hope begin to sprout on the pecan trees." Ms. Tafolla and Ms. Teneyuca are now writing an adult biography that will be finished by year's end.

  A third project, a chap book aimed at 10- to 14-year-olds, is next. It will give more details about Emma Tenayuca's life and her work on behalf of the rights of poor workers. "She was both feared and hated by much of the working establishment in San Antonio," her niece said. "She was forced to leave her extended family and this community that was home to her and beloved to her."

  Many of Emma Tenayuca's relatives still live in San Antonio. She has several grandchildren, too, including a granddaughter named Emma.

• School Library JournalMarch, 2009

  Review by Lee Bock, Glenbrook Elementary School, Pulaski, WI

  Gr 2-6- The title of this bilingual biography echoes the theme of the life of a legendary Mexican-American activist in Texas during the 1920s and 1930s. The story moves from Tenayuca's childhood introduction to the poverty and unfair treatment of Mexican Americans living in her hometown of San Antonio to her increasing awareness of the injustice they suffered, and ultimate fight for their civil rights. Their plight made her angry: "She saw so many people go to work when it was still dark and not come home again until late at night. Many worked so many hours that they were coughing and sick, and still they did not earn enough to feed their children." In 1938, at the age of 21, she led a successful strike of 12,000 pecan shellers whose pitiful wages had been cut from six cents to three cents an hour. In an afterword, which includes photographs of Tenayuca, the rest of her story is related: jailed many times, forced to move, she eventually worked her way through college and returned later to San Francisco as a reading teacher for migrant children. Ybáñez's striking illustrations, framed by pecan-tree branches, are reflective of traditional Mexican mural art, with bold colors and simple shapes. An important book celebrating the struggle for justice and civil rights.