500
Years of Chicana Women's History
Price: $23.95
Subtitle:
Bilingual Edition
Editor: Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez
Subject: American
Studies / Women's
Studies
Paper ISBN 978-0-8135-4224-9
Pages: 320 pages, 899
illustrations
Publication Date: December 2007
Description:
The history of Mexican Americans spans more than five
centuries and varies from region to region across the United States.
Yet most of our history books devote at most a chapter to Chicano
history, with even less attention to the story of Chicanas.
500 Years
of Chicana Women’s History offers a powerful antidote to this
omission with a vivid, pictorial account of struggle and survival,
resilience and achievement, discrimination and identity. The bilingual
text, along with hundreds
of photos and other images, ranges from female-centered stories of
pre-Columbian
Mexico to profiles of contemporary social justice activists, labor
leaders,
youth organizers, artists, and environmentalists, among others.
With
a distinguished, seventeen-member advisory board, the book presents a
remarkable
combination of scholarship and youthful appeal.
In the section on jobs held by Mexicanas under U.S. rule in the 1800s,
for example, readers learn about flamboyant Doña Tules, who
owned
a popular gambling saloon in Santa Fe, and Eulalia Arrilla de
Pérez, a respected curandera (healer) in the San Diego area.
Also covered are the “repatriation” campaigns” of the Midwest during
the Depression that deported both adults and children, 75 percent of
whom were U.S.–born and knew nothing of Mexico. Other stories include
those of the garment, laundry, and cannery worker strikes, told from
the perspective of Chicanas on the ground.
From the women who fought and died in the Mexican Revolution to those
marching with their young children today for immigrant rights, every
story draws inspiration. Like the editor’s previous book, 500 Years of
Chicano History (still in print after 30 years), this thoroughly
enriching view of
Chicana women’s history promises to become a classic.
About the Editor:
Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez is a widely known
Chicana writer, activist, and lecturer. Now director of the Institute
for Multiracial Justice in San Franciso, she has published six books,
most recently De Colores Means All
of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century.
Receive
special offers and book notices by email. Sign up for RU READING?
Price: $23.95
|
