¡Sí, Ella Puede!: The Rhetorical Legacy of Dolores Huerta and the United Farm Workers

The Inter-America Series

by Stacey K. Sowards

Winner, Marie Hochmuth Nichols Award, Public Address Division, National Communication Association, 2020
Outstanding Book Award, Latina/o Communication Studies Division, National Communication Association, 2020 Since the 1950s, Latina activist Dolores Huerta has been a fervent leader and organizer in the struggle for farmworkers’ rights within the Latina/o community. A cofounder of the United Farm Workers union in the 1960s alongside César Chávez, Huerta was a union vice president for nearly four decades before starting her own foundation in the early 2000s. She continues to act as a dynamic speaker, passionate lobbyist, and dedicated figure for social and political change, but her crucial contributions and commanding presence have often been overshadowed by those of Chávez and other leaders in the Chicana/o movement. In this new study, Stacey K. Sowards closely examines Huerta’s rhetorical skills both in and out of the public eye and defines Huerta’s vital place within Chicana/o history. Referencing the theoretical works of Pierre Bourdieu, Chela Sandoval, Gloria Anzaldúa, and others, Sowards closely analyzes Huerta’s speeches, letters, and interviews. She shows how Huerta navigates the complex intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, language, and class through the myriad challenges faced by women activists of color. Sowards’s approach to studying Huerta’s rhetorical influence offers a unique perspective for understanding the transformative relationship between agency and social justice.

Genres: History, Labor

200 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2019

Reviews

[Katherine Lavelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written, scholarly, and clear. Not only is it a thoroughly researched book, it is an important contribution to rhetorical scholarship.

[L Vaiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. If you are looking for a standard biography on Dolores Huerta, this is not it. It is more so an analysis on what makes an icon and how she became one. It’s also an understanding of how Huerta uses her rhetorical agency as a woman of color leading and important movement in the the 60’s. It is very insightful, honest and it painted Huerta in a way that I think that many Mexican American women can relate with. It makes you, I think, appreciate Huerta even more given all she chose to go through and sacrifice. I was truly inspired by it!

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dolores Huerta is a major figure of the Sixties social justice movements, who tends to get lost in the shadow of her compadre Cesar Chavez. Sowards is writing into an academic rhetorical discourse that tends towards an abstraction Huerta certainly would have avoided, but there are plenty of quotes that make the book worthwhile

[Ryan O'Malley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sowards does an amazing job analyzing the legacy of Dolores Huerta through her rhetorical ability. The author shows the ways in which Dolores embraced intersectionality throughout her life as an activist.