SOURCE: A review of Working Cotton, in Booklist, Vol. 89, No. 1, September 1, 1992, p. 55.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Rochman is an American critic, editor, and nonfiction writer. In the following review, she favorably assesses Working Cotton.

"The rows of cotton stretch as far as I can see." The voice is that of Shelan, a migrant child laborer in the cotton fields of central California, and the words hold both physical reality and bitter metaphor. [In Sherley Anne Williams' Working Cotton, which was illustrated by Carole Byard, she] tells of a long day of work with her family—from the cold smoky dawn to night. Byard's double-page acrylic paintings set the soft whiteness of the cotton crop against landscapes and portraits of glowing color, and the sense of beauty and space underlines the child's confinement. The text, based on Williams' Peacock Poems (a National Book Award nominee), is spare, colloquial...