This book vividly describes day-to-day barrio life in Dallas. Achor’s portrayal of the residents challenges stereotypes of traditional Mexican American culture and southwestern barrio life.

Shirley Achor is a native of Dallas, Texas, and has spent most of her life in the city about which she writes. She holds a PhD in anthropology from Southern Methodist University. She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Traineeship and a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in Ethnic Studies. Dr. Achor is an associate professor of sociology and anthropology at East Texas State University.

“A very perceptive, authoritative, and compact description of a Dallas Mexican American community.”—Dallas Morning News
 
“[A] significant contribution to contemporary Chicano studies . . . reveal[ing] new dimensions of the Chicano experience. . . . Achor’s ethnography stands as a major challenge to the negative view of the Chicano barrio as an urban village dominated by the culture of poverty.”—American Anthropologist
 
“The book is not only readable, compassionate, accurate, and careful; it is also a good ethnography.”—International Migration Review
 
“Contributes careful ethnographic and survey research toward constructing a theory of ethnic stratification in the United States.”—Contemporary Sociology
 
“A promising and interesting contribution. . . . The author’s descriptive accounts provide important and telling insights about the barrio’s life cycle, linking it to institutions, change, and adaption.”—Aztlán
 
“Contains a wealth of information concerning the relationships between the residents of the ‘barrio’ and the larger Dallas society, including important data regarding housing conditions, the world of work, and the general sociocultural matrix.”—Southwestern Historical Quarterly