All They Will Call You

All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon (2017) is a documentary novel by author and poet Tim Z. Hernandez. Hernandez is the grandchild of Mexican migrant workers, and he has written a number of texts dealing with themes of Mexican immigration to the US, life in California’s Central Valley, and related topics. In All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, Hernandez writes about the January 28, 1948, plane crash near Los Gatos, California, that resulted in the death of 32 people—mainly Mexican migrant workers who were being deported—using a mix of literary forms including memoir, historical fiction, primary documents, and oral history. In 2018, Hernandez was recognized by the California State Senate for his research into the crash. The title of the book is a reference to a lyric from a Woody Guthrie song about the plane crash. Hernandez’s 2024 sequel to the book, entitled They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, documents his further research into the victims and their families.

This guide uses and cites the 2017 University of Arizona Press paperback edition of All They Will Call You: The Telling of the Plane Wreck at Los Gatos Canyon.