Tomás Rivera

Tomás Rivera's career as a writer and educator was shaped by the struggles of his family, who spent much of their lives as farm laborers following the annual harvests from Texas to the Midwest. Rivera's landmark 1971 novel …y no se lo tragó la tierra—or, in English translation, And the Earth Did Not Devour Him—portrays the terrible conditions faced by Mexican American farm workers. Later in life, as a university administrator, Rivera committed himself to supporting first-generation college students such as himself.