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

As Latino and African Americans increasingly live side by side in large urban centers, as well as in suburban clusters, the idealized concept of a "Rainbow Coalition" would suggest that these two disenfranchised groups are natural political allies. Indeed, as the number of Latinos has increased dramatically over the last ten years, competition over power and resources between these two groups has led to surprisingly antagonistic and uncooperative interactions. Many African Americans now view Latinos, because of their growth in numbers, as a threat to their social, economic, and political...

Why, in the minds of most Americans, are Latinas still thought of as maids, seductresses, and booty-shaking salsa divas?

Never has the concept of Latina identity been more relevant. Also, never has there been a new generation of Latinas so ready to say what they mean and even criticize the Latina generation that preceded them. Until now.

In Border-Line Personalities, twenty writers share their poignant and wickedly funny stories about fighting with their mothers, struggling with speaking Spanish, and dealing with the men who've done them wrong, among a myriad of other...

Out of the lemons handed to Mexican American workers in Corona, California--low pay, segregated schooling, inadequate housing, and racial discrimination--Mexican men and women made lemonade by transforming leisure spaces such as baseball games, parades, festivals, and churches into politicized spaces where workers voiced their grievances, debated strategies for advancement, and built solidarity. Using oral history interviews, extensive citrus company records, and his own experiences in Corona, Jose Alamillo argues that Mexican Americans helped lay the groundwork for civil rights struggles...

La comunidad Latina, the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, has long been told that assimilation is the only way to succeed in American society. This book challenges that generally accepted view and concludes instead that transformation as a way of life is the only viable option for the Latino community as a whole, regardless of racial, class, regional, or religious differences. It highlights how in the everyday life of la comunidad Latina the members of the community can recognize the underlying ways of life, the stories, and the patterns of relationships that cripple...

Given the importance of Latino issues in the current social and economic times, the publication of Latinos in a Changing Society is both timely and prescient in its contributions to the current discourse of how Latinos are being influenced by U.S. norms and culture and how Latinos are also affecting U.S. society. This volume contributes to our need for comprehensive analysis of how Latin communities compare and contrast with other underserved groups. It also examines how changes are taking place within specific Latino groups particularly between first and second generation Cubans,...

Given the importance of Latino issues in the current social and economic times, the publication of "Latinos in a Changing Society" is both timely and prescient in its contributions to the current discourse of how Latinos are being influenced by U.S. norms and culture and how Latinos are also affecting U.S. society. This volume contributes to our need for comprehensive analysis of how Latin communities compare and contrast with other underserved groups. It also examines how changes are taking place within specific Latino groups particularly between first and second generation Cubans,...

With a riotous mix of saints and devils, street theater and dancing, and music and fireworks, Christian festivals are some of the most lively and colorful spectacles that occur in Spain and its former European and American possessions. That these folk celebrations, with roots reaching back to medieval times, remain vibrant in the high-tech culture of the twenty-first century strongly suggests that they also provide an indispensable vehicle for expressing hopes, fears, and desires that people can articulate in no other way.

In this book, Max Harris explores and develops principles for...

Girls in gangs are usually treated as objects of public criticism and rejection. Seldom are they viewed as objects worthy of understanding and even more rarely are they allowed to be active subjects who craft their own public persona--which is what makes this work unique. In this book, Marie "Keta" Miranda presents the results of an ethnographic collaboration with Chicana gang members, in which they contest popular and academic representations of Chicana/o youth and also construct their own narratives of self identity through a documentary film, It's a Homie Thang

In...

Winner, Texas Reference Source Award, Reference Round Table, Texas Library Association, 2003
T.R. Fehrenbach Award, Texas Historical Commission, 2004

Since the early 1700s, women of Spanish/Mexican origin or descent have played a central, if often unacknowledged, role in Texas history. Tejanas have been community builders, political and religious leaders, founders of organizations, committed trade unionists, innovative educators, astute businesswomen, experienced professionals, and highly original artists. Giving their achievements the recognition they have long deserved,...

Hispanics/Latinos are the largest ethnic minority in the United States--but they are far from being a homogenous group. Mexican Americans in the Southwest have roots that extend back four centuries, while Dominicans and Salvadorans are very recent immigrants. Cuban Americans in South Florida have very different occupational achievements, employment levels, and income from immigrant Guatemalans who work in the poultry industry in Virginia. In fact, the only characteristic shared by all Hispanics/Latinos in the United States is birth or ancestry in a Spanish-speaking country.

In this...

From the exuberant excesses of Carmen Miranda in the "tutti frutti hat" to the curvaceous posterior of Jennifer Lopez, the Latina body has long been a signifier of Latina/o identity in U.S. popular culture. But how does this stereotype of the exotic, erotic Latina "bombshell" relate, if at all, to real Latina women who represent a wide spectrum of ethnicities, national origins, cultures, and physical appearances? How are ideas about "Latinidad" imagined, challenged, and inscribed on Latina bodies? What racial, class, and other markers of identity do representations of the Latina body...

While the stereotype of the persistently pregnant Mexican-origin woman is longstanding, in the past fifteen years her reproduction has been targeted as a major social problem for the United States. Due to fear-fueled news reports and public perceptions about the changing composition of the nation's racial and ethnic makeup--the so-called Latinization of America--the reproduction of Mexican immigrant women has become a central theme in contemporary U. S. politics since the early 1990s.

In this exploration, Elena R. Gutierrez considers these public stereotypes of Mexican American and...

Winner, Best Book on Ethnic and Racial Political Ideology and/or Political Theory, Organized Section on Race, Ethnicity, and Politics of the American Political Science Association, 2002

..".awash under a brown tide...the relentless flow of immigrants..like waves on a beach, these human flows are remaking the face of America...." Since 1993, metaphorical language such as this has permeated mainstream media reporting on the United States' growing Latino population. In this groundbreaking book, Otto Santa Ana argues that far from being mere figures of speech, such metaphors...