Book Description
Interviews with nine Mexican American authors conducted primarily in 2007.
Author : Elisabeth Mermann-Jozwiak
Publisher : Univ. Press of Mississippi
Page : 189 pages
File Size : 48,26 MB
Release : 2009
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1604734728
Interviews with nine Mexican American authors conducted primarily in 2007.
Author : Chuy Renteria
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 232 pages
File Size : 45,52 MB
Release : 2021-11-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1609388062
Most agree that West Liberty is a special place. The first majority Hispanic town in Iowa, it has been covered by media giants such as Reuters, Telemundo, NBC, and ESPN. But Chuy Renteria and his friends grew up in the space between these news stories, where a more complicated West Liberty awaits. We Heard It When We Were Young tells the story of a young boy, first-generation Mexican American, who is torn between cultures: between immigrant parents trying to acclimate to midwestern life and a town that is, by turns, supportive and disturbingly antagonistic. Renteria looks past the public celebrations of diversity to dive into the private tensions of a community reflecting the changing American landscape. There are culture clashes, breakdancing battles, fistfights, quinceañeras, vandalism, adventures on bicycles, and souped-up lowriders, all set to an early 2000s soundtrack. Renteria and his friends struggle to find their identities and reckon with intergenerational trauma and racism in a town trying to do the same. A humorous and poignant reflection on coming of age, We Heard It When We Were Young puts its finger on a particular cultural moment at the turn of the millennium.
Author : Priscilla Solis Ybarra
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 28,35 MB
Release : 2016-05-12
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0816533830
Winner of the Western Literature Association’s 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Book Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies Mexican American literature brings a much-needed approach to the increasingly urgent challenges of climate change and environmental injustice. Although current environmental studies work to develop new concepts, Writing the Goodlife looks to long-established traditions of thought that have existed in Mexican American literary history for the past century and a half. During that time period, Mexican American writing consistently shifts the focus from the environmentally destructive settler values of individualism, domination, and excess toward the more beneficial refrains of community, non-possessiveness, and humility. The decolonial approaches found in these writings provide rich examples of mutually respectful relations between humans and nature, an approach that Priscilla Solis Ybarra calls “goodlife” writing. Goodlife writing has existed for at least the past century, Ybarra contends, but Chicana/o literary history’s emphasis on justice and civil rights eclipsed this tradition and hidden it from the general public’s view. Likewise, in ecocriticism, the voices of people of color most often appear in deliberations about environmental justice. The quiet power of goodlife writing certainly challenges injustice, to be sure, but it also brings to light the decolonial environmentalism heretofore obscured in both Chicana/o literary history and environmental literary studies. Ybarra’s book takes on two of today’s most discussed topics—the worsening environmental crisis and the rising Latino population in the United States—and puts them in literary-historical context from the U.S.-Mexico War up to today’s controversial policies regarding climate change, immigration, and ethnic studies. This book uncovers 150 years’ worth of Mexican American and Chicana/o knowledge and practices that inspire hope in the face of some of today’s biggest challenges.
Author : Elizabeth Rodriguez Kessler
Publisher : Addison-Wesley Longman
Page : 260 pages
File Size : 46,44 MB
Release : 2008
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN :
This brief, affordable reader takes a provocative look at critical issues facing the Chican@ communities today and provides thought-provoking questions and writing topics for each reading. Chican@s in the Conversation presents contemporary essays about some of the most important challenges facing Mexican-Americans today, including health, education, identity, and cultural concerns. The wide range of authors includes both contemporary and classic nonfiction and serves not only to introduce these often unfamiliar writers but also to encourage the recognition of Chican@ writers as model essayists.
Author : Nasario García
Publisher : Texas Tech University Press
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 21,43 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780896724280
Nasario Garcia's interviews elicit candid commentary and spontaneous responses that reveal much about life experiences, the creative process, and the unique role that culture, tradition, and geography play in the literature that these writers have produced.".
Author : Reyna Grande
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 15,91 MB
Release : 2012-08-28
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 1451661800
In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home. Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.
Author : Hector Avalos Torres
Publisher : UNM Press
Page : 372 pages
File Size : 38,84 MB
Release : 2007
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9780826340887
Interviews with major Chicana/o authors are the basis for this examination of the commonality of issues in the work of each of them.
Author : Devon G. Peña
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 249 pages
File Size : 16,35 MB
Release : 2022-09-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0816550824
Mexican Americans have traditionally had a strong land ethic, believing that humans must respect la tierra because it is the source of la vida. As modern market forces exploit the earth, communities struggle to control their own ecological futures, and several studies have recorded that Mexican Americans are more impacted by environmental injustices than are other national-origin groups. In our countryside, agricultural workers are poisoned by pesticides, while farmers have lost ancestral lands to expropriation. And in our polluted inner cities, toxic wastes sicken children in their very playgrounds and homes. This book addresses the struggle for environmental justice, grassroots democracy, and a sustainable society from a variety of Mexican American perspectives. It draws on the ideas and experiences of people from all walks of life—activists, farmworkers, union organizers, land managers, educators, and many others—who provide a clear overview of the most critical ecological issues facing Mexican-origin people today. The text is organized to first provide a general introduction to ecology, from both scientific and political perspectives. It then presents an environmental history for Mexican-origin people on both sides of the border, showing that the ecologically sustainable Norteño land use practices were eroded by the conquest of El Norte by the United States. It finally offers a critique of the principal schools of American environmentalism and introduces the organizations and struggles of Mexican Americans in contemporary ecological politics. Devon Peña contrasts tenets of radical environmentalism with the ecological beliefs and grassroots struggles of Mexican-origin people, then shows how contemporary environmental justice struggles in Mexican American communities have challenged dominant concepts of environmentalism. Mexican Americans and the Environment is a didactically sound text that introduces students to the conceptual vocabularies of ecology, culture, history, and politics as it tells how competing ideas about nature have helped shape land use and environmental policies. By demonstrating that any consideration of environmental ethics is incomplete without taking into account the experiences of Mexican Americans, it clearly shows students that ecology is more than nature study but embraces social issues of critical importance to their own lives.
Author : Carmen Boullosa
Publisher : The New Press
Page : 287 pages
File Size : 47,73 MB
Release : 2020-10-27
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 1620976196
Major writers from Mexico weigh in on U.S. immigration policy, from harrowing migrant journeys to immigrant detention to the life beyond the wall Despite the extensive coverage in the U.S. media of the southern border and Donald Trump's proposed wall, most English speakers have had little access to the multitude of perspectives from Mexico on the ongoing crisis. Celebrated novelist Carmen Boullosa (author of Texas and Before) and Alberto Quintero redress this imbalance with this collection of essays—translated into English for the first time—drawing on writing by journalists, novelists, and documentary-makers who are Mexican or based in Mexico. Contributors include the award-winning author Valeria Luiselli, whose Tell Me How It Ends is the go-to book on the child migrant crisis, and the novelist Yuri Herrera, author of the highly acclaimed Signs Preceding the End of the World. Let's Talk About Your Wall uses Trump's wall as a starting point to discuss important questions, including the history of U.S.-Mexican relations, and questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and borders. An essential resource for anyone seeking to form a well-grounded opinion on one of the central issues of our day, Let's Talk About Your Wall provides a fierce and compelling counterpoint to the racist bigotry and irrational fear that consumes the debate over immigration, and a powerful symbol of opposition to exclusion and hate.
Author : Emily Hind
Publisher : University of Arizona Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 18,29 MB
Release : 2019-05-28
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 081653926X
How did men become the stars of the Mexican intellectual scene? Dude Lit examines the tricks of the trade and reveals that sometimes literary genius rests on privileges that men extend one another and that women permit. The makings of the “best” writers have to do with superficial aspects, like conformist wardrobes and unsmiling expressions, and more complex techniques, such as friendship networks, prizewinners who become judges, dropouts who become teachers, and the key tactic of being allowed to shift roles from rule maker (the civilizado) to rule breaker (the bárbaro). Certain writing habits also predict success, with the “high and hard” category reserved for men’s writing and even film directing. In both film and literature, critically respected artwork by men tends to rely on obscenity interpreted as originality, negative topics viewed as serious, and coolly inarticulate narratives about bullying understood as maximum literary achievement. To build the case regarding “rebellion as conformity,” Dude Lit contemplates a wide set of examples while always returning to three figures, each born some two decades apart from the immediate predecessor: Juan Rulfo (with Pedro Páramo), José Emilio Pacheco (with Las batallas en el desierto), and Guillermo Fadanelli (with Mis mujeres muertas, as well as the range of his publications). Why do we believe Mexican men are competent performers of the role of intellectual? Dude Lit answers this question through a creative intersection of sources. Drawing on interviews, archival materials, and critical readings, this provocative book changes the conversation on literature and gendered performance.