Rows of Memory: Journeys of a Migrant Sugar-Beet Worker by Saúl Sánchez (review)

Mexican migration has been documented in many formats, including photographs, films, poems, and literature. Within the context of literature, narratives have generally followed the corridors of migration throughout the United States, especially in the West. Many scholars, such as Dionicio Valdes, Marc Rodriguez, Zaragosa Vargas, and Gabriela Arredondo, have expanded the migration’s narrative to include the Midwest. Saúl Sánchez’s memoir fits into this expansion, sharing and reflecting on the challenges his family overcame when crisscrossing the migratory corridors of the Midwest and West.

The memoir, composed of an introduction, twenty chapters, and a foreword by historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez, covers the time period from the Mexican Revolution to the Vietnam War. Each chapter links Sánchez’s memories through stories of struggles, disappointments, and triumphs. As Valerio-Jiménez notes, Sánchez “never forgot his migrant roots” and “his working-class origins” (xi). Sánchez states that his “memoir comes from a collective memory. It is not a critical history such as is written by academics,” allowing him therefore to talk “about events experienced by three generations”—his grandparents’, his parents’, and his own. His intent is “to bring that heritage back to life and massage it gently in order to hear its voice echoing through time” (1).

Discussing the terms “migrant,” “migrant worker,” and “migrant farm worker” at the start, Sánchez recalls that his family did not use any of these to identify themselves: “we did not need to classify ourselves, we knew very well who we were” (2). At the same time, he acknowledges the struggle to develop a narrative based on two versions of the migrant experience: one historical, the other of his family. By yoking these versions together, Sánchez believes, “we can arrive at something closer to the real story” (7).

In chapters 1 through 3 Sánchez focuses on his family members’ transborder experiences journeying to the United States and following the paths of earlier migrants by working in spinach, cotton, and sugar beet fields. Facing hardship, his family nevertheless develops a sense of home. He remarks that he “knew deep inside that at the center of that world [the migrant experience] was our tiny little home full of the people who came and went but never disappeared” (34). Chapters 4 through 19 continue his narrative of struggles in fields and in classrooms, offering a close examination of the intersections of race and class. In the classroom Sánchez witnessed discrimination. “We spent the entire recess period speaking Spanish in the playground. But once we entered the classroom, we became speechless” (36). On the other hand, in the fields he learned how to survive: we “picked together, ate together, sweated and suffered together” (49).

In the last chapter Sánchez reflects on leaving the migrant stream, noting that “being a migrant is not important. What is important is to live out the migrant experience, and the only way to do that is to be a member of a group, to be part of a family” (185). Sánchez’s struggles between his drive for an education and his commitment to his family ultimately give him strength, and his narrative of these struggles makes Rows of Memory a key contribution to our understanding of the migrant experience in the United States.