Title: Enrado (Patty) collection

Dates: 1965-2014

Collection Number: wa007

Creator/Collector:

Extent: 554 MB

Repository: UC Davis. Welga Project, Filipino American Archive and Repository

Abstract: 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.

Language of Material: English

Currently, access is limited to digital collections available at the online repository at http://welgadigitalarchive.omeka.net

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.

Enrado (Patty) collection. UC Davis. Welga Project, Filipino American Archive and Repository

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.

The Patty Enrado collection include select research material used by Enrado while writing the novel A Village in the Fields. 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 Worker. No additional accruals are expected.