Yolanda Alaniz was raised by migrant farmworkers working the fields in Eastern Washington. After moving to Seattle to attend the University of Washington, she became active in campus chapters of MEChA and the Brown Berets, and in pioneering feminist organizations including Las Chicanas, MUJER, and Radical Women. She was radicalized, becoming a leader in the first strike at the University of Washington and later served as president of an independent union that emerged from the strike. She is politically active on immigrant issues in LA, and describes the book as over 20 years in the making. She hopes it can serve as a university textbook in Chicano studies programs. The book is co-authored by Megan Cornish, who participated in mass civil disobedience to break the color barrier in the construction trades during the 1960s, becoming a Marxist theorist in the process. Both women were closely connected to the Chicano movement in the 1970s. The book is available through Red Letter Press.