All They Will Call You

Tim Z. Hernandez is a Latino writer and poet from Dinuba, California, in the Central Valley. His award-winning poetry collection Skin Tax (2004) addresses themes of love, desire, violence, and machismo based on the author’s personal experiences in the California Central Valley. Hernandez is also the author of Mañana Means Heaven (2013), a novel of historical fiction about the life of Bea Franco, the Latina woman who inspired the character Terry in Jack Kerouac’s canonical beat novel On the Road (1957). In All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, Hernandez uses his skills in poetry and historical fiction to tell the stories of the people who died in the 1948 plane crash in Los Gatos Canyon. The text addresses familiar themes for Hernandez: the life of Latino agricultural workers in the Central Valley of California, love and desire, and the importance of storytelling as a form of memorial.

Hernandez learned about the plane crash that resulted in the death of 28 agricultural workers from Pete Seeger’s version of the song “Plane Crash at Los Gatos (Deportee),” written by Woody Guthrie with music by Martin Hoffman. After hearing it, Hernandez felt compelled to learn about the stories of the people behind the song, both those who wrote it and those who the song is about.