New Books In Latino Studies

Cuban artists have been very productive this past decade, producing stunning and surprising works against a backdrop of political and economic transformation as well as continuing scarcity on the island. Planet/Cuba: Art, Culture and the Future of the Island (Verso, 2015), Rachel Price’s thoughtful approach to this cultural scene, pays special attention to conceptual and performance art that moves from the very local to the global. Her focus on artistic vocabularies centered on trees, marabou, and water as well as the symbolic and real significance of time and surveillance brings together a provocative array of artists that have a lot to tell us about the everyday both in Cuba and on our shared planet. This marvelous book acquaints readers with unforgettable artists and their work.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the past quarter-century, scientists have been mapping and exploring the human genome to locate the genetic basis of disease and track the histories of populations across time and space. As part of this work, geneticists have formulated markers to calculate percentages of European, African, and Amerindian genetic ancestry in populations presumed to originate or inhabit particular geographic regions. The work done by geneticists in recent years has been received with a mixture of excitement and concern. Genomics is simultaneously viewed as the key to diagnosing and curing inherited disease, while also posing a threat to individual privacy and raising concerns over the reappearance of racialized thinking in scientific research. In Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America (Duke University Press, 2014), editors Peter Wade, Carlos Lopez Beltran, Eduardo Restrepo, and Ricardo Ventura Santos ask how ideas of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into the work of genetic scientist

Kevin Bubriski, a New Englander and internationally acclaimed photographer, was a freelance photojournalist when he first arrived in New Mexico in 1981 to study filmmaking in Santa Fe. Bubriski recalls, “Although I was working as a news photographer on my own, I was looking for images that I enjoyed for their own visual merit and innate curiosity.” Bubriski found himself in a new culture as distinct to him as any foreign country he would later photograph. He took his 35-millimeter camera and hand-cranked 16mm Bolex, and began to explore the environs, particularly the neighborhoods of native New Mexicans. Excited by the photographic opportunities, he says, “I went to every fiesta, every parade, every celebration and religious observance.”Look into My Eyes: Nuevomexicanos por Vida 81′-83‘ is a collection of images from that personal exploration, it is a photographic documentation of Hispanic New Mexicans, Nuevomexicanos, taken between 1981-1983 in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and s

The California farmlands have long served as a popular symbol of America’s natural abundance and endless opportunity. Yet, from John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart to Helena Maria Viramontes’s Under the Feet of Jesus, many novels, plays, movies, and songs have dramatized the brutality and hardships of working in the California fields. Little scholarship has focused on what these cultural productions tell us about who belongs in America, and in what ways they are allowed to belong. In The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl (University of Washington Press, 2016), Sarah Wald analyzes this legacy and its consequences by examining the paradoxical representations of California farmers and farmworkers from the Dust Bowl migration to present-day movements for food justice and immigrant rights. Analyzing fiction, nonfiction, news coverage, activist literature, memoirs, and more, Wald gives us a new way of thinki

In Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature (Oxford University Press, 2015), John Alba Cutler provides a literary history of Chicano/a literature that tracks the fields formation and evolution from the 1960s forward. The central focus of the book examines the tension between the theories posited by scholars of assimilation sociology and Chicano/a writers whose literary works, focusing on the Mexican American experience, have advanced rival interpretations of the process of assimilation and immigrant incorporation into American society. Whereas the founders of assimilation sociology (Robert Park and Ernest Burgess among others) characterized American culture as homogenously Anglo-Saxon and presumed assimilation was a desirable and natural social process, Cutler shows how Chicano/a literary works have depicted culture as dynamic, multi-faceted, and uncircumscribed by static notions of authenticity or national unity. More than mere anti-assimilationist, Cutler argues that Chicano/a literary work

To his contemporaries in Gilded Age Manhattan, Guillermo Eliseo was a fantastically wealthy Mexican, the proud owner of a luxury apartment overlooking Central Park, a busy Wall Street office, and scores of mines and haciendas in Mexico. But for all his obvious riches and his elegant appearance, Eliseo was also the possessor of a devastating secret: he was not, in fact, from Mexico at all. Rather, he had begun life as a slave named William Ellis, born on a cotton plantation in southern Texas during the waning years of King Cotton. After emancipation, Ellis, capitalizing on the Spanish he learned during his childhood along the Mexican border and his ambivalent appearance, engaged in a virtuoso act of reinvention. Eliseo’s success in crossing the color line, however, brought heightened scrutiny in its wake as he became the intimate of political and business leaders on both sides of the US-Mexico border. The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave who Became a Millionaire (W.W. Norton, 2016) reads

Betina Cutaia Wilkinson is the author of Partners or Rivals? Power and Latino, Black, and White Relations in the Twenty-First Century (University of Virginia Press 2015). Wilkinson is assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Wake Forest University. In Partners or Rivals, Wilkinson relies on national survey and focus group data to examine how social interaction; feelings of identification with members of their own group and others; and individuals sense of power as established by their racial, economic, and political surroundings impact interracial attitudes. She finds that the complex racial dynamics are not easily reducible to simple formulae, yet they have strong implications for the formation of interracial coalitions.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire.” This axiom encapsulates both the approach and dedication exhibited by Fred Ross during the five decades he spent organizing impoverished and disenfranchised communities throughout the country. In America’s Social Arsonist: Fred Ross and Grassroots Organizing in the Twentieth Century (University of California Press, 2016), Gabriel Thompson provides the first biography of Ross, one of the most influential, albeit virtually unknown, activists and organizers in American history. Radicalized by his experiences working with impoverished Dust Bowl migrants during the Great Depression and interned Japanese Americans during World War II, Ross developed an insatiable desire to stand up for those “kept out” of mainstream society. He spent the majority of his career building Latino political power across the state of California aiding in the establishment of the Community Services Organization (CSO) and the Unite

In Curious Unions: Mexican American Workers and Resistance in Oxnard, California, 1898-1961 (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) Dr. Frank P. Barajas details the central role of Mexican labor in the development of the agriculturally rich coastal plane located between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. In this thoroughly researched history, Barajas relates the curious unions (i.e., unlikely partnerships) formed between agricultural industrialists and small independent growers on the one hand, and a multi-ethnic milieu of Mexican, Japanese, and Filipino laborers on the other. The alliance of small growers with agribusiness dictated a pattern of commercial, residential, and municipal development that simultaneously integrated Mexican laborers into the lowest tier of the local economy, while also segregating them and other people of color residentially and socially. This schizophrenic pattern of economic and spatial development resulted in unintended cross-cultural interactions among people of color that provided the

In Of Forests and Fields: Mexican Labor in the Pacific Northwest (Rutgers University Press, 2016), Dr. Mario Jimenez Sifuentez combines U.S. labor, environmental, and Chicana/o history to tell the story of Mexican laborers in the states of Oregon and Washington. Beginning with the initial migration of Mexican guest workers to the Northwest in 1942 and culminating with the formation and success of regional organizations advocating for farmworker rights in the mid-1990s, Dr. Sifuentez’s study highlights the central role of Mexican labor in transforming the Pacific Northwest into one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country after World War II. At the heart of the book is a deeply personal history of Mexican worker resistance, which Sifuentez traces from the braceros of the 1940s, to the Tejanos of the postwar period, to today’s largely undocumented workforce. Throughout, Dr. Sifuentez discusses the uniqueness of the ethnic Mexican experience in the Pacific Northwest, which departs i

Steve Phillips is the author of Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority (The New Press, 2016). Phillips is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Several weeks ago, Matt Lewis came on the podcast to assess the state-of-affairs for conservatives. This week, Steve Phillips offers his new book on how progressives might reposition their electoral coalition in the future. Drawing on demographic data and the changing electoral map, Phillips argues for a shift from focusing on white swing voters to a new coalition of African American, Latino, and progressive white voters. The podcast is hosted by Heath Brown, assistant professor of public policy at the City University of New York, John Jay College and The Graduate Center. You can follow him on Twitter @heathbrownLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants and the California Farmworker Movement (Yale University Press, 2015), Lori A. Flores illuminates a neglected part of Salinas Valley’s past “to show how this agricultural empire was continually a center, a microcosm, of significant transitions and moments in U.S. labor, immigration, and Latino history.” Focusing on a period some consider the golden age of 20thcentury American abundance and prosperity, 1942-1970, this history examines the interactions of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants during the implementation, administration, and termination of the U.S.-Mexico Emergency Farm Labor Program (a.k.a. Bracero Program). Challenging the more conventional narrative of postwar American prosperity, Grounds for Dreaming reveals how industrial agriculture’s unquenchable thirst for Mexican immigrant labor shaped race relations in California, produced intragroup conflict within ethnic Mexican communities, and stymied the advance

In Latino Stats: American Hispanics by the Numbers (The New Press, 2015), Idelisse Malave and Esti Giordani have produced a concise and accessible one-stop resource of facts and figures that detail the multi-faceted demographics, characteristics, and experiences of the nation’s second largest ethno-racial group. Culling data from state and federal government sources, private sector surveys, non-profit reports, and reliable media outlets, Malave and Giordani depict the Latino experience in contemporary American life and make a compelling argument for the group’s central importance to the nation’s future. Covering topics ranging from immigration and the economy, to education, health, identity, pop culture, and criminal justice, Latino Stats challenges the stereotypes and simplistic assumptions that undergird so much of the popular discourse surrounding Latinos. Up-to-date and well organized, Latino Stats is a handy resource for academics, students, policy-makers, and the general public.Learn m

In Rethinking the Chicano Movement (Routledge, 2015), Marc Simon Rodriguez surveys some of the most recent scholarship on the Chicana/o Civil Rights Movement, situating the struggle within the broader context of the 1960s and 1970s, and assessing its ethos and legacy. Illustrating the movement’s national scope, Dr. Rodriguez highlights: electoral activism in Crystal City Texas, the Farmworker Movement in the California’s San Joaquin Valley, community and educational reform efforts in Denver and Los Angeles, and the rise of Chicano media and arts throughout urban and rural communities across the country. Whereas previous generations of scholars sought to distance the Chicana/o mobilizations from the Mexican Americanist movement of the 30s, 40s, 50s, and early 60s, Rodriguez correctly asserts that El Movimiento blended practical reformist goals with a militant ethos. Youthful in character, determined to establish community control, and impatient for change, Rodriguez concludes that The Movement̵

Ulla Berg’s new book Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (New York University Press, 2015) highlights the deeply historical and central role of migration as a strategy for social mobility, as well as its affect on the formation of identity, in the lived experiences of migrants from the central highlands of Peru. Documenting the aspirational, material, and moral forces that undergird the decision to enter the transnational labor stream, Dr. Berg examines the barriers to and “transgressiveness of Andean mobility.” With the detail of a skilled ethnographer, Berg follows her subjects from the rural communities of the Mantaro Valley to the Peruvian urban centers of Lima and Huancayo, and finally, to U.S. destinations in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Patterson, N.J. Throughout this process, Berg argues that Andean migrants continually refashion themselves as modern and cosmopolitan as they seek to maintain connections to home while overcoming the obstacles of rural po

In Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest (New York University Press, 2015), Sujey Vega Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, traces the way Latina/o Hoosiers established community and belonging in Central Indiana amongst the sharp rise in anti-immigrant/Mexican sentiment after the passage of the Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005 (H.R. 4437). Dr. Vega foregrounds her analysis by illuminating the “pathology of forgetting” practiced by the region’s non-Hispanic White population as they have reimagined and celebrated the region’s ethnic past through the lenses of whiteness and assimilation. Thus, despite their multigenerational presence in the region and regardless of immigration status, Latina/o Hoosiers are perpetually viewed as foreign and unassimilated by many of their White neighbors. Following the passage of H.R. 4437 by the 109th U.S. Congress in Dec. 2005, Dr. Vega explains how th

Julie M. Weise‘s new book Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South Since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015) is the first book to comprehensively document Mexicans’ and Mexican Americans’ long history of migration to the U.S. South. It recounts the untold histories of Mexicanos’ migrations to New Orleans, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and North Carolina as far back as 1910. In the heart of Dixie, Mexicanos navigated the Jim Crow system, cultivated community in the cotton fields, purposefully appealed for help to the Mexican government, shaped the southern conservative imagination in the wake of the civil rights movement, and embraced their own version of suburban living at the turn of the twenty-first century. Rooted in U.S. and Mexican archival research, oral history interviews, and family photographs, Corazon de Dixie unearths not just the facts of Mexicanos’ long-standing presence in the U.S. South but also their own expectations, strategies, and dreams. Also, check out the bookR

In Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (University of California Press, updated ed. 2012) Arlene Davila, Professor of Anthropology at New York University, questions the profound influence of the Hispanic-Latina/o marketing industry in defining notions of Latina/o identity and culture. Providing an ethnography of the industry’s founders, key intellectuals, as well as its position within corporate America, Dr. Davila critiques the “sanitization” of Latinidad by Hispanic ad agencies that promote a “safe” (i.e., consumable) image of Latina/os rooted in behavioral stereotypes as Spanish-language dominant, Catholic, conservative, traditional, family-oriented, and “suicidally brand loyal.” Professor Davila also illuminates the hierarchies of race, class, culture, and nation that not only undergird the “whitewashed” representations of Latina/os, but which also work to marginalize their labor and lack of representation within the industry. Situating

It’s easy to conjure images of paradise when thinking of the Caribbean. The region is know for its lovely beaches, temperate weather, and gorgeous landscapes. For the people who live there, however, living in paradise means dealing with tourists, inequality, exploitation, and corruption. While many scholars have published critiques of Caribbean tourism ranging from measured to withering, the voices of Caribbean people, living in the region or abroad, are rarely evident. Angelique V. Nixon‘s Resisting Paradise: Tourism, Diaspora, and Sexuality in Caribbean Culture (U Press of Mississippi, 2015 ) explores the many ways in which Caribbean authors, artists, workers, filmakers, educators and activists have understood, worked with, and challenged the foundations of a tourist economy. For more information about the author’s work, follow her on Facebook (Angelique V. Nixon), Twitter and Instagram @sistellablack, blog, and visit her staff page on the IGDS website.Learn more about your ad choices. Vi

As multifaceted as it was multinucleated, the Chicana/o Movement of the late-1960s and 1970s was “the largest and most widespread civil rights and empowerment struggle by Mexican Americans in U.S. history.” Since the early 2000s, scholarship on El Movimiento has blossomed, initiating a process of excavation that has revealed the multiple sites, issues, participants, and strategies engaged in this broad struggle for self determination and social justice. In The Chicano Generation: Testimonios of the Movement (University of California Press, 2015), Mario T. Garcia, Professor of Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, assists in this process by centering on Los Angeles, “the political capital of the movement,” and the lives of three of the city’s most prominent activists, Raul Ruiz, Gloria Arellanes, and Rosalio Munoz. To tell their stories, Dr. Garcia employs the testimonio, a narrative form that works as a sort of collaborative oral history or “collab