Author Talk with Robert "Carlos" Fuentes: "The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker's Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan" In-Person

Tue, March 24, 2026 3:00 PM at Green Room, Main Library, 4 West

Join us at the MSU Libraries for an author talk and book signing by Robert “Carlos” Fuentes, author of The Vacation: A Teenage Migrant Farmworker’s Experience Picking Cherries in Michigan. Fuentes’s memoir recounts his time as a teenager in the late ‘60s traveling to Michigan to pick cherries with his family for the summer.

Mr. Fuentes is an MSU alum and retired staff member, formerly holding the position as the Intercultural Initiatives Coordinator. His 22 year career in student services included helping to launch the International Engagement in Mexico program, and promoting global learning.

“Sensitive reminisces of a Mexican American teenager on a cherry-picking ‘vacation’ in the summer of 1969 with his family in northern Michigan. Provides a window to family, religion, race relations, and short-term community life among migrant farm working families through the experiences of an adolescent boy who is coming of age in a migrant camp and the orchards of cherry growers.” Ruben Martinez, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus