Kategoria BISAC: Social Science >> Ethnic Studies - American - Hispanic American Studies

What is identity when you re a girl adopted as an infant by a Cuban American family of Jehovah s Witnesses? The answer isn t easy. You won t find it in books. And you certainly won t find it in the neighborhood. This is just the beginning of Joy Castro s unmoored life of searching and striving that she s turned to account with literary alchemy in Island of Bones.

In personal essays that plumb the depths of not-belonging, Castro takes the all-too-raw materials of her adolescence and young adulthood and views them through the prism of time. The result is an exquisitely rendered,...

According to the 2010 Census, Latinos represent more than 16 percent of the total population and are the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States. Their vast contributions to popular culture are visible in nearly every aspect of American life and are as diverse as the countries and cultures of origin with which Latinos identify themselves. This book provides a historical overview of the developments in U.S. Latino culture and highlights the most recent expressions of Latino life in American popular culture.

With coverage of topics like Latino representations in...

Ilan Stavans's collection of essays on kitsch and high art in the Americas makes a return with thirteen new colorful conversations that deliver Stavans's trademark wit and provocative analysis. "A Dream Act Deferred" discusses an issue that is at once and 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...

Latinos constitute the fastest-growing and largest ethnic minority in the United States, yet less than one percent of network news coverage deals with Latinos as the focus of a story. Out of that one percent, even fewer stories are positive in either content or tone. Author of the acclaimed Brown Tide Rising: Metaphors of Latinos in Contemporary American Public Discourse, Otto Santa Ana has completed a comprehensive analysis of this situation, blending quantitative research with semiotic readings and ultimately applying cognitive science and humanist theory to explain the...

Cesar E. Chavez came to Oxnard, California, in 1958, twenty years after he lived briefly in the city as a child with his migrant farmworker family during the Great Depression. This time Chavez returned as the organizer of the Community Service Organization to support the unionization campaign of the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Together the two groups challenged the agricultural industry s use of braceros (imported contract laborers) who displaced resident farmworkers.

The Mexican and Mexican American populations in Oxnard were involved in cultural struggles and...

This reference work provides an introduction to Allende's life as well as a guided overview of her body of work. Designed for the fan...

Latino Homicide is the first empirically based, but readable book for courses to counter the conventional wisdom that immigrant populations only contribute crime to their communities. For this second edition, Martinez further emphasizes his argument with updated data and the addition of a new city, San Antonio. With fascinating case studies from police reports and actual cases from six varied cities, Latino homicide rates are revealed to be markedly lower than one would expect, given the economic deprivation of these urban areas. Far from dangerous or criminal, these communities...

News media and pundits too frequently perpetuate the notion that Latinos, particularly Mexicans, are an invading force bent on reconquering land once their own and destroying the American way of life. In this book, Leo R. Chavez contests this assumption's basic tenets, offering facts to counter the many fictions about the "Latino threat." With new discussion about anchor babies, the DREAM Act, and recent anti-immigrant legislation in Arizona and other states, this expanded second edition critically investigates the stories about recent immigrants to show how prejudices are used to malign...