A Harvest Of Joy
Now through January 15th, an exhibition at Casa Azafran of migrant students’ photographs celebrates their community’s love and resilience even as it documents the difficult work that goes into putting Tennessee’s freshly picked produce upon our plates.
But still, as the exhibition “Harvest of Joy” clearly chronicles through the display of 39 stunning photographs from 24 artists, all of whom are migratory students, there is also a richness to
their lives that belies the disruptions and the threat of poverty never far away. The photographs and captions capture a deep love for one another, a love as fertile as the rich Tennessee soil upon which these tight-knit families make their honest living.
Jovani Rodriguez is one of these young artists. At only eighteen-years-old, Jovani is already an accomplished photographer. He also knows firsthand the toil and the travel entailed in a life governed by the cycles of the seasons and the timing of Tennessee’s ripening crops. It is a life of special challenges, particularly for migrant youth who number some 1,500 in our state alone, the overwhelming majority of whom are native born and US citizens. For these young people, itinerant farm work means removal from the rhythm and routine that so many of us take for granted, the social bonds we form from being rooted in one place to pattern our lives. Migrant youth lack such consistent patterns, experiencing instead social disruptions caused by attending multiple schools or sometimes even no school at all.
“I've grown up watching my father carry the sun on his back,” Jovani’s poetic caption reads beneath the penetrating portrait of his dad. The older man stands in a sundrenched field of tomatoes, his powerful torso drenched in sweat, his deeply weathered face an intricately-lined study of pride and dignity -- and hope. Hope for his family. Hope for his son. Hope for an American Dream that -- plucked tomato by tomato, squash by squash, pepper by pepper -- slowly takes on weight, slowly becomes more real, slowly fills the bucket.
Migrant Education Program
Organizations such as Conexión Américas, working out of Casa Azafrán, oversee the Migrant Education Program for our state, going the extra miles -- literally -- to meet the migrant youth where they are, providing them with the resources they need to meet the same academic standards as other American kids, preparing them for further learning and productive employment.
Thanks to the caring communities formed by the migrant workers themselves and to the efforts of nonprofits like Conexión Américas, success stories like Jovani Rodriguez, a young man now realizing his potential as a poet and a photographer, a young man now preparing himself to leave the fields and enter college, is not the exception but the expectation.
“Lots of laughter,” the caption beneath one of Jovani’s photos reads, an image capturing a poignant moment full of sweat and smiles, “helps the day go by faster.”
Seeds of hope nurtured with love reap a harvest of joy.
Visit conexionamericas.org/harvest to see more photos and find out how you can get involved.
