The publication of The Harvest: Short Stories five years after Rivera's death cemented his reputation as the foremost chronicler of the Chicano migrant workers' experience. According to Patricia De La Fuente, who reviewed the book in Western American Literature, "Rivera possesses that rare ability in writers to convert everyday episodes in the lives of ordinary people into small masterpieces of sparse yet often lyrical prose."

In his introduction to the book, Julián Olivares noted that the title story was one of three, the others being "The Salamanders" and "Zoo Island," which "bring into focus the experience of the migratory cycle." In "The Harvest," "this cycle is enclosed within the greater cycle of life, death and regeneration." Discussing the story's culminating moment of revelation, Olivares commented, "The sense of deracination caused by migrant farmwork is countered by the youngster's awareness of belonging to a world...