Elva Trevino Hart is author of Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child, the 2012 One Community/One Book selection.
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Barefoot Heart: Stories of a Migrant Child” will be the 2012 One Community/One Book selection. The author, Elva Trevino Hart, tells stories of growing up in Pearsall, Texas, as the youngest child in a family of migrant farm workers. She discusses their struggles to make a living and to overcome prejudice and poverty through education.

Discussion leaders are needed for this collaborative project, led by the UT Health Science Center Libraries.

The One Community/One Book 2012 project recently received the support of Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the form of a community projects grant award.

South Texas is the setting for the story
The Health Science Center’s fourth One Community/One Book selection is a book with deep roots in South Texas. Author Elva Trevino Hart tells stories of growing up in Pearsall, Texas, as the youngest child in a family of migrant farm workers who traveled north to Minnesota and Wisconsin over several summers in the 1950s to work in the beet fields. The book details her family’s struggle to make a living and to overcome prejudice and poverty through education. She also explores her family’s roots in Mexico, and the historical events that carried her father and his family north to Texas and beyond.

Related link: Free copy of book for volunteer discussion group leaders

Barefoot Heart encourages reflection on a number of themes including the importance of family and community, education as a way out of poverty, cultural diversity in our own South Texas communities and the promotion of cultural competence and empathy as we train tomorrow’s health care professionals.

In the book, Elva Trevino Hart discusses her family’s struggle to make a living, and to overcome prejudice and poverty through education.

Author to give campus presentations in February
Plans for One Community/One Book include workshops for discussion group leaders, book discussion groups and several speaking engagements for the author from Feb. 23-25. Hart will speak on campus at noon on Friday, Feb. 24. She also will speak on Saturday, Feb. 25, at the spring conference of the Voelcker Biosciences Teacher Academy. Copies of the book are available through the library, and the bookstore is selling Barefoot Heart at a 25 percent discount.

A book signing will follow Hart’s talk on Feb. 24.

One Community/One Book 2012 is a collaborative effort between The UT Health Science Center Libraries, the Center for Medical Humanities & Ethics, the Academic Center for Excellence in Teaching (ACET) and the San Antonio Public Library. It is made possible in part by a grant from Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For information about One Community/One Book, contact Susan Hunnicutt, special projects librarian, 567-2406.

Reprinted from the December 2011 edition of "News from the Libraries."