The Other Strawberry Festival Art and Poetry Contest
As part of the Other Strawberry Festival, we asked poets and artists 22 years of age and younger to submit works of poetry and visual art. Young poets and artists were asked to respond to either or both of these questions in their creative works:
What are your or your family’s stories of food system injustice and resistance?
What do you see when you imagine a future with a more just food system?
The winning entries are:
Visual Art: Daniela Del Toro Ramirez
&
La Cultura del Campesino
¿Si conoces la cultura del campesino[1]?
It’s big expectations in small households.
It’s sueños[2] of sweet citrus salted with our strong will
and spiced with our sacrifices.
It’s turning a six am hungry belly into five full frijolitos[3].
La cultura del campesino is conscious
of economic inequality and exploitation
Feel free to farm the fruits of my family’s labor,
our roots run four generations deep.
¿Si conoces la cultura del campesino?
Its freeing families from familiar hunger pains
Its fathers falsifying faded labels to surprise their señoras[4] with fresh fruta.[5]
La Cultura del Campesino is a community of color creating the counternarrative to conquest.
¿Si conoces la cultura del campesino?
[1] Do you know the culture of field workers? [2] Dreams [3] Little beans [4] Women [5] Fruit
Poem: Alexes Juarez.
Winners received prizes from Patagonia, a financial sponsor of the Pesticide-Free Soil Project.