UNDERSTANDING LATINXS

Barrio America

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class" of young professionals who revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. Award-winning historian A. K. Sandoval-Strausz reveals this history by focusing on two barrios: Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff. These neighborhoods lost residents and jobs for decades before Latin American immigration turned them around beginning in the 1970s. As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.

Challenging Fronteras

Challenging Fronteras reflects an important new wave of research that moves beyond sweeping generalizations that treat Latinos as a monolithic cultural group. This anthology focuses on the diversity of Latino experiences by providing historical specificity and cutting-edge research that employs the conceptual and analytical tools of social science. Contributors, selected from leading researchers in Latino Studies, include Patricia Zavella, Suzanne Oboler, Alejandro Portes, Clara Rodriquez, Marta Tienda, Nestor Rodriquez, and others.

Chicana Falsa, and Other Stories of Death, Identity, and Oxnard

Serros brings to life in this collection of poems and stories a unique new viewpoint to the American literary landscape. Witty, tender, and emotionally honest, her words speak to the painful and hilarious identity crises particular to the coming of age of an adolescent caught between two cultures.

Corporeality in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature

Featuring canonical Spanish American and Brazilian texts of the 1920s and 30s, Corporeality in Early Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature is an innovative analysis of the body as site of inscription for avant-garde objectives such as originality, subjectivity, and subversion. Guided by close attention to socio-historical contexts and mythical sources, the study illuminates aspects such as the relationship between synecdoche and the body politic, the corporeal and linguistic effects of immersion in the return to language origin, and the quest for new frontiers in poetic ontologies. Unpacking the vanguard body legacy, this insightful anatomy will be of interest to scholars of the avant-garde, body theory, and Latin American comparative literature.

Critical Latin American and Latino Studies

This book brings together some of the most prominent scholars working across the spectrum of Latin American and Latino studies to explore their changing intellectual undertaking in relation to global processes of change. Critical Latin American and Latino Studies identifies the challenges and possibilities of more politically engaged and theoretically critical modes of scholarly practice. One objective is to provide a brief critical history of the study of various Latin American cultures -- Latino, Chicano, Puerto Rican, among others. But these essays also serve to assess the roles of ethnic and area studies in light of changing scholarly trends, from emphases on gender and sexuality to a focus on postcoloniality and globalization. The result is an important contribution to current debates on the conditions of contemporary knowledge production. Book jacket.

Cultural studies in the Curriculum: Teaching Latin America

Cultural studies has shifted the focus of language and literary studies to concerns previously excluded from the classroom: the perspectives of marginal groups, the expressive forms and social practices of popular and mass cultures. Among Latin Americanists, this academic approach is strongly contested, for reasons both philosophical and political. In their introduction, the editors examine this conflict, relating the history of cultural studies in Latin America to later developments in Britain and the United States. The nine essays in this volume probe the tension and interdependence between the literary and the cultural, and they demonstrate the relevance of cultural studies to a new generation of language learners in an era of globalization.Some of the topics discussed in Cultural Studies in the Curriculum are Chicano/a writing; Caribbean film, music, religious expressions, and sport; colonial Spanish perceptions of indigenous life; ethical issues in United States and Latin American business relations; and assumptions about gender and sexuality in Mexico before machismo. The wealth of material considered includes history, novels, poems, photographs, criminology texts, ethnography, anthropology, jokes, corridos, urban architecture, and movies.

Encyclopedia Latina: Literature, Latina American-race Vol. 4

In its four volumes, 650 entries, 2000 pages and 1.2 million words, Encyclopedia Latina explores every aspect of Latino life in America from a myriad of perspectives, spanning the arts, media, cuisine, government and politics, science and technology, business, health, and sports, among others. While the collection represents an important cultural point of reference and source of pride for Latino youth, it will also serve the interests of an increasingly diverse American population who can all relate to the themes and stories included in this resource.

Hispanic Nation

A new ethnic identity is being constructed in the United States: the Hispanic nation. Overcoming age-old racial, regional, and political differences, Americans of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and other Spanish-language origins are beginning to imagine themselves as a single ethnic community - which by the turn of the century may become the United States' largest and most influential minority. Only in recent years have great numbers of Hispanics begun to consider themselves as related within a single culture. Hispanics are redefining their own images and agendas, shaping a population, and paving wider pathways to power. In the process, they are changing both themselves and the culture, government, and urban habits of the communities around them. In this ground-breaking book, Geoffrey Fox shows how and why Hispanics are changing the United States. Based on interviews, observations, and extensive research, Hispanic Nation examines why such diverse people are imagining themselves as one; the politics of turning a statistical fiction into a social reality; the impact of the Spanish-language media on Hispanics' self-images; ethnic consciousness and political movements (Cesar Chavez and the farm workers movement, the Young Lords and La Raza Unida, Puerto Rican and Mexican encounters in the Midwest); controversies surrounding "high" and popular Hispanic/Latino art, music, and literature; and the institutionalization of the movement everywhere - from local school boards to the U.S. Congress.

Latin America and the World Economy

This anthology situates the economic history of Latin America within the larger world economy through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The essays feature both narrative and more technical approaches and are valuable to instructors in history, economics, and political science.

Latin American Popular Culture

Latin American Popular Culture: An Introduction is a collection of articles that explores a wide range of compelling cultural subjects in the region, including carnival, romance, funerals, medicine, monuments and dance, among others. The introduction lays out the most important theoretical approaches to the culture of Latin America, and the chapters serve as illustrative case studies. Featuring the latest scholarship in cultural history most of the chapters have not previously been published Latin American Popular Culture is an important resource for courses in Latin American history, civilization, popular culture, and anthropology.

Latino/a Popular Culture

Latinos have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. While the presence of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture in the United States buttresses the much-heralded Latin Explosion, the images themselves are often contradictory.In Latino/a Popular Culture, Habell-Pallán and Romero have brought together scholars from the humanities and social sciences to analyze representations of Latinidad in a diversity of genres - media, culture, music, film, theatre, art, and sports - that are emerging across the nation in relation to Chicanas, Chicanos, mestizos, Puerto Ricans, Caribbeans, Central Americans and South Americans, and Latinos in Canada.Contributors include Adrian Burgos, Jr., Luz Calvo, Arlene Dávila, Melissa A. Fitch, Michelle Habell-Pallán, Tanya Katerí Hernández, Josh Kun, Frances Negron-Muntaner, William A. Nericcio, Raquel Z. Rivera, Ana Patricia Rodríguez, Gregory Rodriguez, Mary Romero, Alberto Sandoval-Sánchez, Christopher A. Shinn, Deborah R. Vargas, and Juan Velasco.

Latinos: Remaking America

"This rich and varied collection gives content and analytic shape to the notion of a pan-ethnic Latino experience in the U.S. The authors use as markers a variety of shared socioeconomic conditions and immigration histories at the heart of these diverse experiences. Latinos takes an important step toward carving out a field for empirical and theoretical specification."—Saskia Sassen, author of Guests and Aliens"In this thought-provoking volume, scholars from a range of disciplines raise key questions about Latinos in the United States. Admirably complete and judiciously framed, Latinos breaks new ground as it presents this group's multiple experiences."—Cecilia Menjívar, author of Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America"This outstanding book makes a highly significant contribution to scholarship on the fast-growing Latino population. There simply is no other book as comprehensive and well documented. Latinos will be read by a broad audience of academics (in social science, ethnic studies, policy, education, law), as well as policy makers and analysts trying to understand this group."—Pedro A. Noguera, author of The Imperatives of Power: Political Change and the Social Basis of Regime Support in Grenada from 1951-1991"This is a landmark scholarly work in its scope, comprehensiveness, and excellence. It makes an important contribution to improving our understanding of the Latino experience in the United States."—Raul Yzaguirre, President of the National Council of La Raza"Latinos brings together the most sophisticated thinking on the changing intellectual complexion of America. Drawing upon scholars in both the humanities and the social sciences, Latinos challenges us to redefine what we mean by 'American' culture and indeed 'America' itself. This book is necessary reading for all those who believe that a fully inclusive definition of American Studies is long overdue."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man"How and why are Latin American immigrants changing the U.S. socially, culturally, economically, and politically? And how and why do Latino group experiences vary? This fascinating interdisciplinary collection of essays advances our understanding both of the main ‘new immigrant’ peoples of our time and of the ‘new America.’"—Susan Eckstein, author of Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social Movements"The contributors, among the best in the world, raise absolutely riveting questions about immigration, residential segregation, voting behavior, workforce participation, education, gender, health status, and variations among Latino groups (Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and others). Latinos is essential reading for anyone who cares about the high ideals of liberty and justice for all."—Richard A. Shweder, author of Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology

Latinos in the United States: Diversity and Change

As the major driver of U.S. demographic change, Latinos are reshaping key aspects of the social, economic, political, and cultural landscape of the country. In the process, Latinos are challenging the longstanding black/white paradigm that has been used as a lens to understand racial and ethnic matters in the United States. In this book, Sáenz and Morales provide one of the broadest sociological examinations of Latinos in the United States. The book focuses on the numerous diverse groups that constitute the Latino population and the role that the U.S. government has played in establishing immigration from Latin America to the United States. The book highlights the experiences of Latinos in a variety of domains including education, political engagement, work and economic life, family, religion, health and health care, crime and victimization, and mass media. To address these issues in each chapter the authors engage sociological perspectives, present data examining major trends for both native-born and immigrant populations, and engage readers in thinking about the major issues that Latinos are facing in each of these dimensions. The book clearly illustrates the diverse experiences of the array of Latino groups in the United States, with some of these groups succeeding socially and economically, while other groups continue to experience major social and economic challenges. The book concludes with a discussion of what the future holds for Latinos. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, social scientists, and policymakers interested in Latinos and their place in contemporary society.

Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas

Challenging the stereotypical images of the dominating male and the subservient woman, Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas addresses the variety of representations of gender in Latin American culture. Ranging across homosexuality, prostitution, football, politics and ethnic relations, this fascinating study analyzes the many potent images of gender, from Maradona, the child trickster of Argentinian football, to La Malinche, mistress of a conquistador and traitor to her nation. Based on social anthropological fieldwork, the essays in Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas present rich ethnographic material drawn from a variety of locations in Latin America, from Mexico City to the highlands of Ecuador. Paying particular attention to the cultural and symbolic meanings of gender research in the region, together the essays reveal the central role of gender differences in the making of ethnic, national, political and economic divisions.

Mestizo Nations

Nationality in Latin America has long been entwined with questions of racial identity. Just as American-born colonial elites grounded their struggle for independence from Spain and Portugal in the history of Amerindian resistance, constructions of nationality were based on the notion of the fusion of populations heterogeneous in culture, race, and language. But this rhetorical celebration of difference was framed by a real-life pressure to assimilate into cultures always defined by Iberian American elites. In Mestizo Nations, Juan De Castro explores the construction of nationality in Latin American and Chicano literature and thought during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on the discourse of mestizaje—which proposes the creation of a homogenous culture out of American Indian, black, and Iberian elements—he examines a selection of texts that represent the entire history and regional landscape of Latin American culture in its Western, indigenous, and neo-African traditions from Independence to the present.

Mexican Americans/American Mexicans: From Conquistadors to Chicanos

In the years since the first edition of this important study was published, the changes in the Mexican American community in the United States have been great indeed. This extensively revised edition-with a new title-includes expanded chapters on these new developments of the recent past: the Chicano Movimiento of the late sixties and seventies; their considerable political and economic achievements; improvements in immigration law; the creative explosion in literature and the fine arts; the increased role of Chicanas; the rise and decline of four great leaders-César Chávez, "Corky" Gonzales, Reies López Tijerina, and José Angel Gutiérrez. An extensive account of the pre-Columbian world and the impact of the early Spanish explorers and settlers takes note of new findings and interpretations.

Millennial Lotería

OMG, can you even? Millennial Lotería is a hilarious and insightful parody of the classic “Mexican Bingo” game called Lotería, but this time, it’s like way more millennial. Born from the viral Instagram account @MillennialLoteria, this game reimagines La Dama as La Feminist, El Catrín as El Hipster, and Las Jaras as La Hashtag.
Filled with nostalgia and ironic humor, it’s guaranteed to make your next fiesta be lit AF. So grab your bitcoins, get a couple of your fave followers together, and prepare to yell “Yaaaaasssssssssss, Millennial Lotería!”
Each set includes:• 46 cards• 10 boards• 80 bitcoin tokens• and a collectible Millennial Lotería pin!

Once Upon a Quinceanera

Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a “phenomenal, indispensable” (USA Today) exploration of the Latina “sweet fifteen” celebration, by the bestselling author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of ButterfliesThe quinceañera, a celebration of a Latina girl's fifteenth birthday, has become a uniquely American trend. This lavish party with ball gowns, multi-tiered cakes, limousines, and extravagant meals is often as costly as a prom or a wedding. But many Latina girls feel entitled to this rite of passage, marking a girl's entrance into womanhood, and expect no expense to be spared, even in working-class families. Acclaimed author Julia Alvarez explores the history and cultural significance of the “quince” in the United States, and the consequences of treating teens like princesses. Through her observations of a quince in Queens, interviews with other quince girls, and the memories of her own experience as a young immigrant, Alvarez presents a thoughtful and entertaining portrait of a rapidly growing multicultural phenomenon, and passionately emphasizes the importance of celebrating Latina womanhood.

Out Of The Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation

Are Hispanics “making it”—achieving the American dream following the pattern of other ethnic groups? This controversial book shatters the myth that 20 million His panics—fast becoming the nation’s largest minority—are a permanent underclass. Chavez considers the radical implications for bilingual education, immigration policy, and affirmative action.

Recovering the U.S. Hispanic literary heritage

Fifteen years of archival and critical work have been conducted under the auspices of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project at the University of Houston. This ongoing and comprehensive program seeks to locate, identify, preserve, and disseminate the written culture of U.S. Latinos from the Spanish Colonial Period to contemporary times. In the sixth volume of the series, the authors explore key issues and challenges in this project, such as the issues of "place" or region in Hispanic intellectual production, nationalism and transnationalism, race and ethnicity, as well as methodological approaches to recovering the documentary heritage. Included are essays on religious writing, the construction of identity and nation, translation and the movement of books across borders, and women writers and revolutionary struggle.

The Afro-Latin@ Reader: History and Culture in the United States

The Afro-Latin@ Reader focuses attention on a large, vibrant, yet oddly invisible community in the United States: people of African descent from Latin America and the Caribbean. The presence of Afro-Latin@s in the United States (and throughout the Americas) belies the notion that Blacks and Latin@s are two distinct categories or cultures. Afro-Latin@s are uniquely situated to bridge the widening social divide between Latin@s and African Americans; at the same time, their experiences reveal pervasive racism among Latin@s and ethnocentrism among African Americans. Offering insight into Afro-Latin@ life and new ways to understand culture, ethnicity, nation, identity, and antiracist politics, The Afro-Latin@ Reader presents a kaleidoscopic view of Black Latin@s in the United States. It addresses history, music, gender, class, and media representations in more than sixty selections, including scholarly essays, memoirs, newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, short stories, and interviews.While the selections cover centuries of Afro-Latin@ history, since the arrival of Spanish-speaking Africans in North America in the mid-sixteenth-century, most of them focus on the past fifty years. The central question of how Afro-Latin@s relate to and experience U.S. and Latin American racial ideologies is engaged throughout, in first-person accounts of growing up Afro-Latin@, a classic essay by a leader of the Young Lords, and analyses of U.S. census data on race and ethnicity, as well as in pieces on gender and sexuality, major-league baseball, and religion. The contributions that Afro-Latin@s have made to U.S. culture are highlighted in essays on the illustrious Afro-Puerto Rican bibliophile Arturo Alfonso Schomburg and music and dance genres from salsa to mambo, and from boogaloo to hip hop. Taken together, these and many more selections help to bring Afro-Latin@s in the United States into critical view.

The Hispanic Condition

In The Hispanic Condition, Ilan Stavans offers a subtle and insightful meditation on Hispanic society in the United States. A native of Mexico, Stavans has emerged as one of the most distinguished Latin American writers of our time, an award-winning novelist and critic praised by scholars and beloved by readers. In this pioneering psycho-historical profile, he delves into the cultural differences and similarities among the five major Hispanic groups: Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Central and South Americans, and Spaniards.Masterfully interweaving historical, literary, and political references with his personal experience, Stavans discusses the divisions within a common heritage; customs of music, love, sex, marriage, and religious belief; the role of the intellectual in society; ideological struggle; and the hopeful visions of the future at the core of a civilization rooted in the trauma of the past.

The Latino Studies Reader

A collection of twenty of the most provocative and exciting essays written on the unique and divergent Latino communities living in the United States.

The Latino/a Condition

All too often, groups who do not effectively define themselves find that others assume the power to explain them. Until recently, this has certainly been the case with American Latinos/as, as evidenced by demeaning media stereotypes and the groups's near-invisibility in U.S. history texts. Indeed, as the demise of the Soviet empire shifted America's national anxieties to domestic irritants, images of Latinos/as changed for the worse. Immigration reform acts in 1965 and 1986 brought millions of new immigrants from Latin American countries. By the end of the 1980s, their presence had become vexing to many. English-only movements sprang up. Bilingual education came under attack. Movements to close the border gained momentum. Now, Latinos/as are speaking back. The Latino Condition brings together some of these new voices, and some of the pioneers, in law, sociology, history, politics, and literature. This pathbreaking volume addresses such questions as: Who exactly is a Latino/a? Who is Hispanic? Who is Chicano/a? How did Spanish-speaking people come to the United States? Should the United States try to control Latino/a immigration and is this even possible? How has "the silent minority" been stereotyped by popular culture? Why don't traditional civil rights remedies work for Latinos/as? Is assimilation possible, or even desirable, for all Latinos/as? What makes for conflict between Latinos/as and other racial groups? Are Latinos/as a race or an ethnicity? Should Latino/a children be taught in Spanish? What can border theory tell us about culture, language, and power?

The Riddle of Cantinflas

Ilan Stavans’s collection of essays on kitsch and high art in the Americas makes a return with twenty-one colorful essays and conversations that deliver Stavans’s trademark wit and provocative analysis. “A Dream Act Deferred” discusses an issue that is always topical in the dialogue of Hispanic popular culture: immigration. This essay generated a vociferous response when first published in The Chronicle of Higher Education as the issue of immigration was contested in states like Arizona and is included here as a new addition that adds a rich layer to Stavans’s vibrant discourse. “Arrival: Notes from an Interloper” recounts the author’s origins as a social critic and provides the reader with interactive insight into the mind behind the matter. He writes with incisive intelligence about such luminaries as Cantinflas, Sandra Cisneros, Subcomandante Marcos, the artist José Guadalupe Posada, and the pop singer Selena, as well as about Latin American political posters, historietas, and dictators as novelistic characters.
Always humorous and perceptive, Stavans delivers an expanded collection that has the power to go even further beyond common assumptions and helps us understand Hispanic popular culture and its counterparts in the United States.

The United States of Mestizo

The United States of Mestizo is a powerful manifesto attesting to the fundamental changes the nation has undergone in the last half-century. Writer Ilan Stavans meditates on how the cross-fertilizing process that defined the Americas during the colonial period--the racial melding of Europeans and indigenous peoples--foretells the miscegenation that is the most salient profile of America today. If, as W.E.B. DuBois once argued, the twentieth century was defined by a color fracture at its core, Stavans believes the twenty-first will be shaped by a multi-color line that will make us all a sum of parts.

The Vulnerable Observer

In classical anthropology, subjects of study are seen as vulnerable while their observers are instructed to remain detached and objective. Yet with the emergence during the last decade of a group of anthropologists with recognizable connections to the cultures in which they work, the lines between participant and observer, insider and outsider are no longer so easily drawn. In The Vulnerable Observer, the award-winning anthropologist Ruth Behar offers a new theory and practice for this humanistic anthropology. No longer looking over others' shoulders, she becomes one of the subjects of study as she reflects upon the observer as well as the observed. Eloquently interweaving ethnography and memoir, Ruth Behar reflects on fieldwork in Spain, Cuba, and the United States through her personal stories of loss as a young Cuban Jewish immigrant. Beginning with a poignant essay exploring the refuge she found in her fieldwork as her grandfather died, she proposes an anthropology that is lived and written in a personal voice in the hope that it will lead us toward greater depth of understanding and feeling for those about whom we write.

Triangulations: Narrative Strategies for Navigating Latino Identity

Just as mariners use triangulation, mapping an imaginary triangle between two known positions and an unknown location, so, David J. Vázquez contends, Latino authors in late twentieth-century America employ the coordinates of familiar ideas of self to find their way to new, complex identities. Through this metaphor, Vázquez reveals how Latino autobiographical texts, written after the rise of cultural nationalism in the 1960s, challenge mainstream notions of individual identity and national belonging in the United States.In a traditional autobiographical work, the protagonist frequently opts out of his or her community. In the works that Vázquez analyzes inTriangulations, protagonists instead opt in to collective groups—often for the express political purpose of redefining that collective. Reading texts by authors such as Ernesto Galarza, Jesús Colón, Piri Thomas, Oscar “Zeta” Acosta, Judith Ortiz Cofer, John Rechy, Julia Alvarez, and Sandra Cisneros, Vázquez engages debates about the relationship between literature and social movements, the role of cultural nationalism in projects for social justice, the gender and sexual problematics of 1960s cultural nationalist groups, the possibilities for interethnic coalitions, and the interpretation of autobiography. In the process, Triangulations considers the potential for cultural nationalism as a productive force for aggrieved communities of color in their struggles for equality.

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