Author waits 40 years to write migrant worker novel

After a difficult youth as a migrant farm worker, a grandmother from the Rio Grande Valley looks back in compassion, not anger. She has written a splendid novel based upon her family.

Young Angelica Ozuna faced a world of travel with migrants’ jobs through dozens of states, across thousands of miles. She helped her mother cook and wash for 120 men.

The oldest of eight children, Angelica changed schools whenever the crops were harvested. She missed taking many exams.

Her strong family ties, and a father and mother who really cared, led her to write about it 40 years later. Her clear memory became Last Ride on the Ferry: A Novel Set in Los Ebanos, Texas by Angelica Reyna. Its 154 pages carry fine characters and emotions.

“Picking cotton by hand was undoubtedly the worst job anyone could ever perform,” she wrote. “The cotton gloves were no match for the sharp and steel-like dry pods that held the cotton bolls … It was common for the braceros’ hands to be wrapped with handkerchiefs … to see the blood stained fabric. The Ozuna boys (her brothers) were sometimes assigned to be the water boys. Everyone drank water with the same dipper.”

During these years she admired her strong father, Severo Ozuna.

“Although he only had a second-grade education in Mexico, he had so much wisdom, intelligence, talent and kindness. He touched a lot of lives that never knew his name. He repeatedly helped strangers who were in time of need.”

She remembers people who triumphed, usually, over trouble with a laugh. Her book reminds me of The Grapes of Wrath, about farmers losing their land in 1930s America. Did they laugh less?

Her family lost their land, first to the United States after the Mexican War in the 1840s. During the 20th century they lost their last bit of land to legal challenges within Mexico.

The author outworked misfortune. She worked on this book for three years. She left Edinburg High School as a junior, but did not graduate. She earned her General Education Degree years later, then started taking college courses and attending writers’ seminars.

“My father’s favorite saying was ‘To succeed in America, one only needs a good brain and good heart.’ Well, maybe there is a difference. Now it is imperative to have a good education if one is to succeed,” she said.

“There are still so many people desperate to come find work and are searching for a new life in this wonderful country. Back in the 1930s-50s it was easy to cross the border to come and work in the U.S. In fact, it was almost expected by the farmers who wanted cheap labor. Gradually, things started changing and now after 9/11 many laws have changed to protect our country.”

Her novel impresses. Her husband, David Bland, encouraged her to write it at their home in Indiana. A charming grandmother, she worked in factories 30 years, then as a Realtor in Indiana and Ohio. She then became a cosmetologist for 12 years, retired, and returns to the Valley every year.

The novel costs $19.95. The author will speak about the book, autograph it, and give a PowerPoint presentation at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Museum of South Texas History, 121 E. McIntyre, in downtown Edinburg. Call 383-6911 for more information.

The admission fees are $4 for adults, $3 for 62 and over, $2.50 for students 13 and over, and $1.50 for children 12 to 4 and include the program on a space-available basis.

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Jim McKone, public relations officer for the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, reviews books and writes columns for The Monitor. You can reach him at mckonetx@hiline.net.