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Spirituality has consistently been present in the political and cultural counternarratives of Chicanx literature. Calling the Soul Back focuses on the embodied aspects of a spirituality integrating body, mind, and soul. Centering the relationship between embodiment and literary narrative, Christina Garcia Lopez shows narrative as healing work through which writers and readers ritually call back the soul—one’s unique immaterial essence—into union with the body, counteracting the wounding fragmentation that emerged out of colonization and imperialism. These readings feature both underanalyzed and more popular works by pivotal writers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Sandra Cisneros, and Rudolfo Anaya, in addition to works by less commonly acknowledged authors.

Calling the Soul Back explores the spiritual and ancestral knowledge offered in narratives of bodies in trauma, bodies engaged in ritual, grieving bodies, bodies immersed in and becoming part of nature, and dreaming bodies. Reading across narrative nonfiction, performative monologue, short fiction, fables, illustrated children’s books, and a novel, Garcia Lopez asks how these narratives draw on the embodied intersections of ways of knowing and being to shift readers’ consciousness regarding relationships to space, time, and natural environments.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, Calling the Soul Back draws on literary and Chicanx studies scholars as well as those in religious studies, feminist studies, sociology, environmental studies, philosophy, and Indigenous studies, to reveal narrative’s healing potential to bring the soul into balance with the body and mind.

Today the United States leads the world in incarceration rates. The country increasingly relies on the prison system as a “fix” for the regulation of societal issues. Captivity Beyond Prisons is the first full-length book to explicitly link prisons and incarceration to the criminalization of Latina (im)migrants.

Starting in the 1990s, the United States saw tremendous expansion in the number of imprisoned (im)migrants, specifically Latinas/os. Consequently, there was also an increase in the number of deportations. In addition to regulating society, prisons also serve as a reproductive control strategy, both in preventing female inmates from having children and by separating them from their families. With an eye to racialized and gendered technologies of power, Escobar argues that incarcerated Latinas are especially depicted as socially irrecuperable because they are not considered useful within the neoliberal labor market. This perception impacts how they are criminalized, which is not limited to incarceration but also extends to and affects Latina (im)migrants’ everyday lives. Escobar also explores the relationship between the immigrant rights movement and the prison abolition movement, scrutinizing a variety of social institutions working on solutions to social problems that lead to imprisonment.

Accessible to both academics and those in the justice and social service sectors, Escobar’s book pushes readers to consider how, even in radical spaces, unequal power relations can be reproduced by the very entities that attempt to undo them.

One of Mexico’s foremost social and political chroniclers and its most celebrated cultural critic, Carlos Monsiváis has read the pulse of his country over the past half century. The author of five collections of literary journalism pieces called crónicas, he is perhaps best known for his analytic and often satirical descriptions of Mexico City’s popular culture.

This comprehensive study of Monsiváis’s crónicas is the first book to offer an analysis of these works and to place Monsiváis’s work within a theoretical framework that recognizes the importance of his vision of Mexican culture. Linda Egan examines his ideology in relation to theoretical postures in Latin America, the United States, and Europe to cast Monsiváis as both a heterodox pioneer and a mainstream spokesman. She then explores the poetics of the contemporary chronicle in Mexico, reviewing the genre’s history and its relation to other narrative forms. Finally, she focuses on the canonical status of Monsiváis’s work, devoting a chapter to each of his five principal collections.

Egan argues that the five books that are the focus of her study tell a story of ever-renewing suspense: we cannot know “the end” until Monsiváis is through constructing his literary project. Despite this, she observes, his work between 1970 and 1995 documents important discoveries in his search for causes, effects, and deconstructions of historical obstacles to Mexico’s passage into modernity.

While anthropologists and historians continue to introduce new paradigms for the study of Mexico’s cultural space, Egan’s book provides a reflexive twist by examining the work of one of the thinkers who first inspired such a critical movement. More than an appraisal of Monsiváis, it offers a valuable discussion of theoretical issues surrounding the study of the chronicle as it is currently practiced in Mexico. It balances theory and criticism to lend new insight into the ties between Mexican society, social conscience, and literature.

This anthology explores Rastafari religion, culture, and politics in Jamaica and other parts of the African diaspora. An Afro-Caribbean religious and cultural movement that sprang from the streets of Kingston, Jamaica and the 1930s, today Rastafari has close to one million adherents. The basic message of Rastafari -- the dismantling of all oppressive institutions and the liberation of humankind -- even has strong appeal to non-believers who are captivated by reggae music, the lyrics, and the "immortal spirit" of its enormously popular practitioner, Bob Marley.

Probing into Rastafari's still evolving belief system, political goals, and cultural expression, the contributors to this volume emphasize the importance of Africana history and the Caribbean context. "Long before the  term 'Afrocentricity' came into popular use in the United States, Jamaican Rastafarians had embraced the concept as the most important recipe for naming their reality and reclaiming their black heritage in the African diaspora."

In this first major English-language interpretation of charrería, Kathleen Mullen Sands describes the evolution of this equestrian tradition, highlighting the role of horsemen and women throughout Mexico's history. For those who believe cowboy culture and rodeo represent historic horsemanship in the United States, Charrería Mexicana reveals a festival of equal complexity and distinction.

Today, over one hundred Chicago-area Catholic churches offer Spanish language mass to congregants. How did the city's Mexican population, contained in just two parishes prior to 1960, come to reshape dozens of parishes and neighborhoods?

Deborah E. Kanter tells the story of neighborhood change and rebirth in Chicago's Mexican American communities. She unveils a vibrant history of Mexican American and Mexican immigrant relations as remembered by laity and clergy, schoolchildren and their female religious teachers, parish athletes and coaches, European American neighbors, and from the immigrant women who organized as guadalupanas and their husbands who took part in the Holy Name Society. Kanter shows how the newly arrived mixed memories of home into learning the ways of Chicago to create new identities. In an ever-evolving city, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans’ fierce devotion to their churches transformed neighborhoods such as Pilsen.

The first-ever study of Mexican-descent Catholicism in the city, Chicago Católico illuminates a previously unexplored facet of the urban past and provides present-day lessons for American communities undergoing ethnic integration and succession.

Chicana Feminisms presents new essays on Chicana feminist thought by scholars, creative writers, and artists. This volume moves the field of Chicana feminist theory forward by examining feminist creative expression, the politics of representation, and the realities of Chicana life. Drawing on anthropology, folklore, history, literature, and psychology, the distinguished contributors combine scholarly analysis, personal observations, interviews, letters, visual art, and poetry. The collection is structured as a series of dynamic dialogues: each of the main pieces is followed by an essay responding to or elaborating on its claims. The broad range of perspectives included here highlights the diversity of Chicana experience, particularly the ways it is made more complex by differences in class, age, sexual orientation, language, and region. Together the essayists enact the contentious, passionate conversations that define Chicana feminisms.

The contributors contemplate a number of facets of Chicana experience: life on the Mexico-U.S. border, bilingualism, the problems posed by a culture of repressive sexuality, the ranchera song, and domesticana artistic production. They also look at Chicana feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, the history of Chicanas in the larger Chicano movement, autobiographical writing, and the interplay between gender and ethnicity in the movie Lone Star. Some of the essays are expansive; others—such as Norma Cantú’s discussion of the writing of her fictionalized memoir Canícula—are intimate. All are committed to the transformative powers of critical inquiry and feminist theory.

Contributors. Norma Alarcón, Gabriela F. Arredondo, Ruth Behar, Maylei Blackwell, Norma E. Cantú, Sergio de la Mora, Ann duCille, Michelle Fine, Rosa Linda Fregoso, Rebecca M. Gámez, Jennifer González, Ellie Hernández, Aída Hurtado, Claire Joysmith, Norma Klahn, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Anna Nieto Gomez, Renato Rosaldo, Elba Rosario Sánchez, Marcia Stephenson, Jose Manuel Valenzuela, Patricia Zavella

Since the 1980s Chicana writers including Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo, and Alma Luz Villanueva have reworked iconic Mexican cultural symbols such as mother earth goddesses and La Llorona (the Wailing Woman of Mexican folklore), re-imagining them as powerful female figures. After reading the works of Chicana writers who created bold, powerful, and openly sexual female characters, Debra J. Blake wondered how everyday Mexican American women would characterize their own lives in relation to the writers’ radical reconfigurations of female sexuality and gender roles. To find out, Blake gathered oral histories from working-class and semiprofessional U.S. Mexicanas. In Chicana Sexuality and Gender, she compares the self-representations of these women with fictional and artistic representations by academic-affiliated, professional intellectual Chicana writers and visual artists, including Alma M. López and Yolanda López.

Blake looks at how the Chicana professional intellectuals and the U.S. Mexicana women refigure confining and demeaning constructions of female gender roles and racial, ethnic, and sexual identities. She organizes her analysis around re-imaginings of La Virgen de Guadalupe, La Llorona, indigenous Mexica goddesses, and La Malinche, the indigenous interpreter for Hernán Cortés during the Spanish conquest. In doing so, Blake reveals how the professional intellectuals and the working-class and semiprofessional women rework or invoke the female icons to confront the repression of female sexuality, limiting gender roles, inequality in male and female relationships, and violence against women. While the representational strategies of the two groups of women are significantly different and the U.S. Mexicanas would not necessarily call themselves feminists, Blake nonetheless illuminates a continuum of Chicana feminist thinking, showing how both groups of women expand lifestyle choices and promote the health and well-being of women of Mexican origin or descent.

This is the first book solely dedicated to the history, development, and present-day flowering of Chicana and Chicano visual arts. It offers readers an opportunity to understand and appreciate Chicana/o art from its beginnings in the 1960s, its relationship to the Chicana/o Movement and its leading artists, themes, current directions, and cultural impacts.

Although the word “Chicano” once held negative connotations, students—along with civil rights activists and artists—adopted it in the late 1960s in order to reimagine and redefine what it meant to be Mexican American in the United States. Chicanismo is the ideology and spirit behind the Chicano Movement and Chicanismo unites the artists whose work is revealed and celebrated in this book.

Jackson’s scope is wide. He includes paintings, prints, murals, altars, sculptures, and photographs—and, of course, the artists who created them. Beginning with key influences, he describes the importance of poster and mural art, focusing on the work of the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada and the significance of Mexican and Cuban talleres (print workshops). He examines the importance of art collectives in the United States, as well as Chicano talleres and community art centers, for the growth of the Chicano art movement. In conclusion, he considers how Chicano art has been presented to the general American public.

As Jackson shows, the visual arts have both reflected and created Chicano culture in the United States. For college students—and for all readers who want to learn more about this fascinating subject—his book is an ideal introduction to an art movement with a social conscience.

Spirit, mind, and heart—in traditional Mexican health beliefs all three are inherent to maintaining psychological balance. For Mexican Americans, who are both the oldest Latina/o group in the United States as well as some of the most recent arrivals, perceptions of health and illness often reflect a dual belief system that has not always been incorporated in mental health treatments.

Chicana and Chicano Mental Health offers a model to understand and to address the mental health challenges and service disparities affecting Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans/Chicanos. Yvette G. Flores, who has more than thirty years of experience as a clinical psychologist, provides in-depth analysis of the major mental health challenges facing these groups: depression; anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder; substance abuse; and intimate partner violence. Using a life-cycle perspective that incorporates indigenous health beliefs, Flores examines the mental health issues affecting children and adolescents, adult men and women, and elderly Mexican Americans.

Through case studies, Flores examines the importance of understanding cultural values, class position, and the gender and sexual roles and expectations Chicanas/os negotiate, as well as the legacies of migration, transculturation, and multiculturality. Chicana and Chicano Mental Health is the first book of its kind to embrace both Western and Indigenous perspectives.

Ideally suited for students in psychology, social welfare, ethnic studies, and sociology, the book also provides valuable information for mental health professionals who desire a deeper understanding of the needs and strengths of the largest ethnic minority and Hispanic population group in the United States.

What does it mean to be Chicana/o? That question might not be answered the same as it was a generation ago.

As the United States witnesses a major shift in its population—from a white majority to a country where no single group predominates—the new mix not only affects relations between ethnic groups but also influences how individuals view themselves. This book addresses the development of individual and social identity within the context of these new demographic and cultural shifts. It identifies the contemporary forces that shape group identity in order to show how Chicana/os' sense of personal identity and social identity develops and how these identities are affected by changes in social relations.

The authors, both nationally recognized experts in social psychology, are concerned with the subjective definitions individuals have about the social groups with which they identify, as well as with linguistic, cultural, and social contexts. Their analysis reveals what the majority of Chicanas/os experience, using examples from music, movies, and the arts to illustrate complex concepts. In considering ¿Quién Soy? ("Who Am I?"), they discuss how individuals develop a positive sense of who they are as Chicanas/os, with an emphasis on the influence of family, schools, and community. Regarding ¿Quiénes Somos? ("Who Are We?"), they explore Chicanas/os' different group memberships that define who they are as a people, particularly reviewing the colonization history of the American Southwest to show how Chicanas/os' group identity is influenced by this history. A chapter on "Language, Culture, and Community" looks at how Chicanas/os define their social identities inside and outside their communities, whether in the classroom, neighborhood, or region. In a final chapter, the authors speculate how Chicana/o identity will change as Chicanas/os become a significant proportion of the U.S. population and as such factors as immigration, intermarriage, and improvements in social standing influence the process of identification. At the end of each chapter is an engaging exercise that reinforces its main argument and shows how psychological approaches are applicable to real life. Chicana/o Identity in a Changing U.S. Society is an unprecedented introduction to psychological issues that students can relate to and understand. It complements other titles in the Mexican American Experience series to provide a balanced view of issues that affect Mexican Americans today.

Dubbed the "decade of the Hispanic," the 1980s was instead a period of retrenchment for Chicanas/os as they continued to confront many of the problems and issues of earlier years in the face of a more conservative political environment. Following a substantial increase in activism in the early 1990s, Chicana/o scholars are now prepared to take stock of the Chicano Movement's accomplishments and shortcomings—and the challenges it yet faces—on the eve of a new millennium.

Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is a state-of-the-art assessment of the most significant developments in the conditions, fortunes, and experiences of Chicanas/os since the late seventies, with an emphasis on the years after 1980, which have thus far received little scholarly attention. Ten essays by leading Chicana and Chicano scholars on economic, social, educational, and political trends in Chicana/o life examine such issues as the rapid population growth of Chicanas/os and other Latinos; the ascendancy of Reaganomics and the turn to the right of American politics; the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment; the launching of new initiatives by the Mexican government toward the Chicano community; and the emergence of a new generation of political activists. The authors have been drawn from a broad array of disciplines, ranging from economics to women's studies, in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on Chicana/o developments in the contemporary era. The inclusion of authors from different regions of the United States and from divergent backgrounds enhances the broad perspective of the volume.

The editors offer this anthology with the intent of providing timely and useful insights and stimulating reflection and scholarship on a diverse and complex population. A testament to three decades of intense social struggle, Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is ample evidence that the legacy of the Movimiento is alive and well.

Contents
Part One: Demographic and Economic Trends Among Chicanas/os
1. Demographic Trends in the Chicano Population: Policy Implications for the Twenty First Century, Susan Gonzalez-Baker
2. Mexican Immigration in the 1980s and Beyond: Implications for Chicanos/as, Leo R. Chavez and Rebecca Martinez
3. Chicanas/os in the Economy: Issues and Challenges Since 1970, Refugio Rochin and Adela de la Torre
Part Two: Chicano Politics: Trajectories and Consequences
4. The Chicano Movement: Its Legacy for Politics and Policy, John A. Garcia
5. Chicano Organizational Politics and Strategies in the Era of Retrenchment, Isidro D. Ortiz
6. Return to Aztlan: Mexican Policy Design Toward Chicanos, María Rosa Garcia-Acevedo
Part Three: Chicana/o Educational Struggles: Dimensions, Accomplishments and Challenges
7. Actors Not Victims: Chicanos in the Struggle for Educational Equality, Guadalupe San Miguel
8. Juncture in the Road: Chincano Studies Since El Plan de Santa Barbara, Ignacio Garcia
Part Four: Gender Feminism and Chicanas/os: Developments and Perspectives
9. Gender and Its Discontinuities in Male/Female Domestic Relations: Mexicans in Cross Cultural Context, Adelaida R. Del Castillo
10. With Quill and Torch: A Chicana Perspective on the American Women's Movement and Feminist Theories, Beatríz Pesquera and Denise A. Segura

During the 1960s and '70s, Mexican Americans began to agitate for social and political change. From their diverse activities and agendas there emerged a new political consciousness. Emphasizing race and class within the context of an oppressive society, this militant ethos would become the unifying theme for groups involved in a myriad of causes. Chicanismo, as it came to be known, marked a transformation in the way Mexican Americans thought about themselves, enabling them for the first time to see themselves as a community with a past and a present. In Chicanismo, the first intellectual history of the Chicano Movement and the militant ethos that emerged from it, Ignacio Garcia traces the development of the philosophical strains that guided the movement. First, Mexican Americans came to believe that the liberal agenda that had promised education and equality had failed them, leading them toward separatism. Second, they saw a need to reinterpret the past as it related to their own history, leading them to discovered their legacy of struggle. Third, Mexican American activists, intellectuals, and artists affirmed a renewed pride in their ethnicity and class status. Finally, this new philosophy-Chicanismo-was politicized through the struggles of the Chicano organizations that promoted it as they faced resistance or external attacks. Although the idea of Chicanismo would eventually unravel, its ideological strains remain important even today. Combining research and personal knowledge of people, events, organizations, and political/cultural rhetoric, along with a synthesis of scholarship from a variety of fields, Chicanismo provides a unique, multidimensional view of the Chicano Movement.

In the 1930s and 1940s the early roots of the Chicano Movement took shape. Activists like Jesús Cruz, and later Ralph Cuarón, sought justice for miserable working conditions and the poor treatment of Mexican Americans and immigrants through protests and sit-ins.

Lesser known is the influence that Communism and socialism had on the early roots of the Chicano Movement, a legacy that continues today. Examining the role of Mexican American working-class and radical labor activism in American history, Enrique M. Buelna focuses on the work of the radical Left, particularly the Communist Party (CP) USA.

Buelna delves into the experiences of Cuarón, in particular, as well as those of his family. He writes about the family’s migration from Mexico; work in the mines in Morenci, Arizona; move to Los Angeles during the Great Depression; service in World War II; and experiences during the Cold War as a background to exploring the experiences of many Mexican Americans during this time period.

The author follows the thread of radical activism and the depth of its influence on Mexican Americans struggling to achieve social justice and equality. The legacy of Cuarón and his comrades is significant to the Chicano Movement and in understanding the development of the labor and civil rights movements in the United States. Their contributions, in particular during the 1960s and 1970s, informed a new generation to demand an end to the Vietnam War and to expose educational inequality, poverty, civil rights abuses, and police brutality.
 

Until recently, mainstream American environmentalism has been a predominantly white, middle-class movement, essentially ignoring the class, race, and gender dimensions of environmental politics. In this provocative collection of original essays, the environmental dimensions of the Chicana/o experience are explicitly expressed and debated.

Employing a variety of genres ranging from poetry to autobiography to theoretical and empirical essays, the voices in this collection speak to the most significant issues of environmentalism and social justice, recognizing throughout the need for a pluralism of Chicana/o philosophies. The contributors provide an excellent basis for understanding how multiple Chicana/o views on the environment play out in the context of dominant social, political and economic views. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics examines a number of Chicana/o ecological perspectives. How can the ethics of reciprocity present in Chicana/o agropastoral life be protected and applied on a broader scale? How can the dominant society, whose economic structure is invested in "placeless mobility," take note of the harm caused to land-based cultures, take responsibility for it, and take heed before it is too late? Will the larger society be "ecologically housebroken" before it destroys its home?

Grounded in actual political struggles waged by Chicana/o communities over issues of environmental destruction, cultural genocide, and socioeconomic domination, this volume provides an important series of snapshots of Chicana/o history. Chicano Culture, Ecology, Politics illuminates the bridges that exist—and must be understood—between race, ethnicity, class, gender, politics, and ecology.

CONTENTS
Part 1: IndoHispano Land Ethics
Los Animalitos: Culture, Ecology, and the Politics of Place in the Upper R¡o Grande, Devon G. Peña
Social Action Research, Bioregionalism, and the Upper Río Grande, Rubén O. Martínez
Notes on (Home)Land Ethics: Ideas, Values, and the Land, Reyes García
Part 2: Environmental History and Ecological Politics
Ecological Legitimacy and Cultural Essentialism: Hispano Grazing in Northern New Mexico, Laura Pulido
The Capitalist Tool, the Lawless, and the Violent: A Critique of Recent Southwestern Environmental History, Devon G. Peña and Rubén O. Martínez
Ecofeminism and Chicano Environmental Struggles: Bridges across Gender and Race, Gwyn Kirk
Philosophy Meets Practice: A Critique of Ecofeminism through the Voices of Three Chicana Activists, Malia Davis
Part 3: Alternatives to Destruction
The Pasture Poacher (a poem), Joseph C. Gallegos
Acequia Tales: Stories from a Chicano Centennial Farm, Joseph C. Gallegos
A Gold Mine, an Orchard, and an Eleventh Commandment, Devon G. Peña

Chicano Popular Culture, Second Edition provides a fascinating, timely, and accessible introduction to Chicano cultural expression and representation. New sections discuss music, with an emphasis on hip-hop and rap; cinema and filmmakers; media, including the contributions of Jorge Ramos and María Hinojosa; and celebrations and other popular traditions, including quinceañeras, cincuentañeras, and César Chávez Day.
 
This edition features:

• Chicanas in the Chicano Movement and Chicanos since the Chicano Movement
• New material on popular authors such as Denise Chávez, Alfredo Vea, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Juan Felipe Herrera
• Suggested Readings to supplement each chapter
• Theoretical approaches to popular culture, including the perspectives of Norma Cantú, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Pancho McFarland, Michelle Habell-Pallán, and Víctor Sorell

 
With clear examples, an engaging writing style, and helpful discussion questions, Chicano Popular Culture, Second Edition invites readers to discover and enjoy Mexican American popular culture.

This edition of Chicano Popular Culture has been replaced by Chicano Popular Culture, Second Edition, ISBN 978-0-8165-3652-8, also by Charles M. Tatum.

Among the lasting legacies of the Chicano Movement is the cultural flowering that it inspired--one that has steadily grown from the 1960s to the present. It encompassed all of the arts and continues to earn acclaim both nationally and internationally. Although this Chicano artistic renaissance received extensive scholarly attention in its initial phase, the post-Movimiento years after the late 1970s have been largely overlooked. This book meets that need, demonstrating that, despite the changes that have taken place in all areas of Chicana/o arts, a commitment to community revitalization continues to underlie artistic expression.

This collection examines changes across a broad range of cultural forms--art, literature, music, cinema and television, radio, and theater--with an emphasis on the last two decades. Original articles by both established and emerging scholars review such subjects as the growth of Tejano music and the rise of Selena, how films and television have affected the Chicana/o experience, the evolution of Chicana/o art over the last twenty years, and postmodern literary trends.

In all of the essays, the contributors emphasize that, contrary to the popular notion that Chicanas/os have succumbed to a victim mentality, they continue to actively struggle to shape the conditions of their lives and to influence the direction of American society through their arts and social struggle. Despite decades usually associated with self-interest in the larger society, the spirit of commitment and empowerment has continued to infuse Chicana/o cultural expression and points toward a vibrant future.

CONTENTS
All Over the Map: La Onda Tejana and the Making of Selena, Roberto R. Calderón
Outside Inside-The Immigrant Workers: Creating Popular Myths, Cultural Expressions, and Personal Politics in Borderlands Southern California, Juan Gómez-Quiñones
"Yo soy chicano": The Turbulent and Heroic Life of Chicanas/os in Cinema and Television, David R. Maciel and Susan Racho
The Politics of Chicano Representation in the Media, Virginia Escalante
Chicana/o and Latina/o Gazing: Audiences of the Mass Media, Diana I. Ríos
An Historical Overview/Update on the State of Chicano Art, George Vargas
Contemporary Chicano Theater, Arturo Ramírez
Breaking the Silence: Developments in the Publication and Politics of Chicana Creative Writing, 1973-1998, Edwina Barvosa-Carter
Trends and Themes in Chicana/o Writings in Postmodern Times, Francisco A. Lomelí, Teresa Márquez, and María Herrera-Sobek

Chicano Studies is a comparatively new academic discipline. Unlike well-established fields of study that long ago codified their canons and curricula, the departments of Chicano Studies that exist today on U.S. college and university campuses are less than four decades old. In this edifying and frequently eye-opening book, a career member of the discipline examines its foundations and early years. Based on an extraordinary range of sources and cognizant of infighting and the importance of personalities, Chicano Studies is the first history of the discipline.

What are the assumptions, models, theories, and practices of the academic discipline now known as Chicano Studies? Like most scholars working in the field, Michael Soldatenko didn't know the answers to these questions even though he had been teaching for many years. Intensely curious, he set out to find the answers, and this book is the result of his labors. Here readers will discover how the discipline came into existence in the late 1960s and how it matured during the next fifteen years-from an often confrontational protest of dissatisfied Chicana/o college students into a univocal scholarly voice (or so it appears to outsiders).

Part intellectual history, part social criticism, and part personal meditation, Chicano Studies attempts to make sense of the collision (and occasional wreckage) of politics, culture, scholarship, ideology, and philosophy that created a new academic discipline. Along the way, it identifies a remarkable cast of scholars and administrators who added considerable zest to the drama.

This anthology provides an overview of the history and theory of Chicano/a art from the 1960s to the present, emphasizing the debates and vocabularies that have played key roles in its conceptualization. In Chicano and Chicana Art—which includes many of Chicano/a art's landmark and foundational texts and manifestos—artists, curators, and cultural critics trace the development of Chicano/a art from its early role in the Chicano civil rights movement to its mainstream acceptance in American art institutions. Throughout this teaching-oriented volume they address a number of themes, including the politics of border life, public art practices such as posters and murals, and feminist and queer artists' figurations of Chicano/a bodies. They also chart the multiple cultural and artistic influences—from American graffiti and Mexican pre-Columbian spirituality to pop art and modernism—that have informed Chicano/a art's practice.

Contributors. Carlos Almaraz, David Avalos, Judith F. Baca, Raye Bemis, Jo-Anne Berelowitz, Elizabeth Blair, Chaz Bojóroquez, Philip Brookman, Mel Casas, C. Ondine Chavoya, Karen Mary Davalos, Rupert García, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Shifra Goldman, Jennifer A. González, Rita Gonzalez, Robb Hernández, Juan Felipe Herrera, Louis Hock, Nancy L. Kelker, Philip Kennicott, Josh Kun, Asta Kuusinen, Gilberto “Magu” Luján, Amelia Malagamba-Ansotegui, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Dylan Miner, Malaquias Montoya, Judithe Hernández de Neikrug, Chon Noriega, Joseph Palis, Laura Elisa Pérez, Peter Plagens, Catherine Ramírez, Matthew Reilly, James Rojas, Terezita Romo, Ralph Rugoff, Lezlie Salkowitz-Montoya, Marcos Sanchez-Tranquilino, Cylena Simonds, Elizabeth Sisco, John Tagg, Roberto Tejada, Rubén Trejo, Gabriela Valdivia, Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, Victor Zamudio-Taylor

The literary culture of the Spanish-speaking Southwest has its origins in a harsh frontier environment marked by episodes of intense cultural conflict, and much of the literature seeks to capture the epic experiences of conquest and settlement. The Chicano literary canon has evolved rapidly over four centuries to become one of the most dynamic, growing, and vital parts of what we know as contemporary U.S. literature.

In this comprehensive examination of Chicano and Chicana literature, Charles M. Tatum brings a new and refreshing perspective to the ethnic identity of Mexican Americans. From the earliest sixteenth-century chronicles of the Spanish Period, to the poetry and narrative fiction of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, and then to the flowering of all literary genres in the post–Chicano Movement years, Chicano/a literature amply reflects the hopes and aspirations as well as the frustrations and disillusionments of an often marginalized population.

Exploring the work of Rudolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, Luis Alberto Urrea, and many more, Tatum examines the important social, historical, and cultural contexts in which the writing evolved, paying special attention to the Chicano Movement and the flourishing of literary texts during the 1960s and early 1970s. Chapters provide an overview of the most important theoretical and critical approaches employed by scholars over the past forty years and survey the major trends and themes in contemporary autobiography, memoir, fiction, and poetry.

The most complete and up-to-date introduction to Chicana/o literature available, this book will be an ideal reference for scholars of Hispanic and American literature. Discussion questions and suggested reading included at the end of each chapter are especially suited for classroom use.

2023 Honorable Mention Best History Book, International Latino Book Awards

Broad and encompassing examination of Chicanx popular culture since World War II and the utopian visions it articulated

Amid the rise of neoliberalism, globalization, and movements for civil rights and global justice in the post–World War II era, Chicanxs in film, music, television, and art weaponized culture to combat often oppressive economic and political conditions. They envisioned utopias that, even if never fully realized, reimagined the world and linked seemingly disparate people and places. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Chicanx popular culture forged a politics of the possible and gave rise to utopian dreams that sprang from everyday experiences.

In Chicanx Utopias, Luis Alvarez offers a broad study of these utopian visions from the 1950s to the 2000s. Probing the film Salt of the Earth, brown-eyed soul music, sitcoms, poster art, and borderlands reggae music, he examines how Chicanx pop culture, capable of both liberation and exploitation, fostered interracial and transnational identities, engaged social movements, and produced varied utopian visions with divergent possibilities and limits. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin, Stuart Hall, and the Zapatista movement, this book reveals how Chicanxs articulated pop cultural utopias to make sense of, challenge, and improve the worlds they inhabited.

To offer testimonio is inherently political, a vehicle that counters the hegemony of the state and illuminates the repression and denial of human rights. Claiming Home, Shaping Community shares testimonios from and about the lives of Mexican-origin people who left the rural, agricultural Imperial and San Joaquín Valleys to pursue higher education at a University of California campus.

While symbolically their journeys embody the master narrative of the “American Dream,” Claiming Home, Shaping Community does not echo the “rags to riches” trope reified in dominant culture, but rather, it asserts the need to rehumanize the purpose and heart of education. In each chapter, the narrators illustrate myriad supports that allowed them to move forward on their academic and professional journeys: hard work, affirmative action, inclusionary practices, mentors, and their communities’ cultural wealth. Each trajectory is unique, but put together as a collection, the commonalities emerge.

Denoting a sense of political and social urgency that responds to the current accentuated economic disparities between the haves and the have-nots, these essays illuminate the broader societal benefits of federal legislation and resources for state-funded public higher education and policies that broaden access and resources. By telling their stories, the contributors seek to empower others on their journeys to and through higher education.

Contributors:

Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez
Manuel Barajas
Angelica Cárdenas-Chaisson
Gloria H. Cuádraz
Yolanda Flores
Francisco J. Galarte
John J. Halcón
Ester Hernández
Rosa M. Jiménez
Roberto Moreno
José R. Padilla
Enid Pérez
Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner

Collecting Mexico centers on the ways in which aesthetics and commercialism intersected in officially sanctioned public collections and displays in late nineteenth-century Mexico. Shelley E. Garrigan approaches questions of origin, citizenry, membership, and difference by reconstructing the lineage of institutionally collected objects around which a modern Mexican identity was negotiated. In doing so, she arrives at a deeper understanding of the ways in which displayed objects become linked with nationalistic meaning and why they exert such persuasive force.

Spanning the Porfiriato period from 1867 to 1910, Collecting Mexico illuminates the creation and institutionalization of a Mexican cultural inheritance. Employing a wide range of examples—including the erection of public monuments, the culture of fine arts, and the representation of Mexico at the Paris World’s Fair of 1889—Garrigan pursues two strands of thought that weave together in surprising ways: national heritage as a transcendental value and patrimony as potential commercial interest.

Collecting Mexico shows that the patterns of institutional collecting reveal how Mexican public collections engendered social meaning. Using extensive archival materials, Garrigan’s close readings of the processes of collection building offer a new vantage point for viewing larger issues of identity, social position, and cultural/capital exchange.

National borders are often taken for granted as normal and necessary for a peaceful and orderly global civil society. Roberto D. Hernández here advances a provocative argument that borders—and border violence—are geospatial manifestations of long histories of racialized and gendered colonial violence.

In Coloniality of the U-S///Mexico Border, Hernández offers an exemplary case and lens for understanding what he terms the “epistemic and cartographic prison of modernity/coloniality.” He adopts “coloniality of power” as a central analytical category and framework to consider multiple forms of real and symbolic violence (territorial, corporeal, cultural, and epistemic) and analyzes the varied responses by diverse actors, including local residents, government officials, and cultural producers.

Based on more than twenty years of border activism in San Diego–Tijuana and El Paso–Ciudad Juárez, this book is an interdisciplinary examination that considers the 1984 McDonald’s massacre, Minutemen vigilantism, border urbanism, the ongoing murder of women in Ciudad Juárez, and anti-border music.

Hernández’s approach is at once historical, ethnographic, and theoretically driven, yet it is grounded in analyses and debates that cut across political theory, border studies, and cultural studies. The volume concludes with a theoretical discussion of the future of violence at—and because of—­national territorial borders, offering a call for epistemic and cartographic disobedience.

 

There are approximately half a million people living in 227 officially designated colonias in southern Arizona and New Mexico. These border communities are characterized by poor-quality housing, a lack of infrastructure (paved roads, water and sewer systems, and electricity), high levels of poverty and unemployment, and a disproportionate concentration of Hispanics. These colonias comprise one of the country’s largest pockets of poverty. Even so, little is known about these towns or the people who live in them. This book provides the first comprehensive treatment of Arizona and New Mexico colonias, with the aim of increasing their visibility and promoting community development.

Beginning with an examination of the origins of border region settlement and the emergence of colonias in southern Arizona and New Mexico in the late 1800s, the book then turns to an assessment of current social, economic, and housing conditions. The authors also examine how Mexico’s recent economic crises and U.S. immigration and border security policies have shaped the quality of life in colonias, and they evaluate recent community development initiatives. By examining the challenges and successes of these recent efforts, the authors are able to provide a generalized plan for community development. Balancing analyses of these communities with a review of the positive steps taken to improve the quality of life of their inhabitants, Colonias in Arizona and New Mexico is an indispensable tool for anyone interested in public policy or immigration issues.

Members of communities of color in the United States often struggle for equity, autonomy, survival, and justice. Community-Based Participatory Research is an edited volume from activist-scholars who present personal testimonies showcasing how community-based participatory research (CBPR) can lead to sustainable change and empowerment. Editor Natalia Deeb-Sossa has chosen contributors whose diverse interdisciplinary projects are grounded in politically engaged research in Chicanx and Latinx communities. The scholars’ advocacy work is a core component of the research design of their studies, challenging the idea that research needs to be neutral or unbiased.

The testimonies tell of projects that stem from community demands for truly collaborative research addressing locally identified issues and promoting community social change. Contributors share their personal experiences in conducting CBPR, focusing on the complexities of implementing this method and how it may create sustainable change and community empowerment. Along with a retrospective analysis of how CBPR has been at the center of the Chicana/o Movement and Chicana/o studies, the book includes a discussion of consejos y advertencias (advice and warnings).

The most knowledgeable people on community issues are the very members of the communities themselves. Recognizing a need to identify the experiences and voices (testimonios) of communities of color, activist-­scholars showcase how to incorporate the perspectives of the true experts: the poor, women, farmworkers, students, activists, elders, and immigrants.