Description
The Patty Enrado collection includes research material by Filipino American Author Patty Enrado. Enrado was raised in California’s
central valley during the
Delano Grape Strike. The collection contains 1 series: Research files, 1965-2014, which contains correspondences, primary and secondary sources
regarding Filipino American involvement in the
Delano Grape Strike and United Farm Workers.
Background
Patty Enrado was born in Los Angeles and raised in Terra Bella, a small town not far from Delano, California. Patty and her
family moved to Terra Bella in 1965, the year of the
Delano
Grape
Strike. There, her father worked as a cook while her mother and many of her relatives worked as farmworkers, packing oranges during
the winter and spring and picking grapes during the summer and fall. After high school, Enrado attended the University of
California, Davis and obtained her bachelor’s degree in English. She spent the following two years serving as a volunteer
with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, working as a librarian and tutor at a boarding school for Yup’ik Eskimo students in St. Mary’s
Alaska and as a newspaper editor for an organization in San Francisco that helped prisoners in California with legal and medical
issues. After her service at JVC, Enrado drove across country to attend Syracuse University’s Creative Writing Program.
Returning to the San Francisco Bay Area after receiving her master’s degree, Enrado learned about the Agbayani Retirement
Village during her attendance at a local poetry reading by Filipino-American poets. Driven by a desire to know more, she
visited Agbayani Village during the summer of that year, interviewing an elderly resident. A few years later, she watched
a PBS documentary entitled, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement, and read the companion book
of the same name, noting their lack of coverage of Filipino-Americans’ contribution to the farm labor movement. These experiences
prompted Enrado to begin researching the story of Filipino-Americans’ contribution to the farm labor movement. What initially
began as a personal endeavor grew into a larger desire to honor her parents and her community by bringing this story to the
attention of the Filipino-American community and beyond. After eighteen years of juggling research and writing with the demands
of work and family, she released her book, A Village in the Fields, A Novel, about a retired Filipino farm worker and his
long and costly struggle for civil rights, on the 50th anniversary of the
Delano
Grape
strike. Today, Enrado writes about information technology and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two children.
Restrictions
For permission to reproduce or publish, please contact archivist Jason Sarmiento at ajsarmiento@ucdavis.edu. The researcher
assumes all responsibility for possible infringement which may arise from reproduction or publication of materials from the
Welga Project, Filipino American Archive and Repository collections.