New Books In Latino Studies

“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

In Traders and Raiders: The Indigenous World of the Colorado Basin, 1540-1859 (UNC Press, 2014) Assistant Professor of History at Whittier College Natale Zappia provides an in-depth look into the “interior world” of the Lower Colorado River. Tracking the people, networks, economies, and social relations of an expansive indigenous world that includes parts of the modern-day states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, California, Baja California, and Sonora, Mexico, Dr. Zappia narrates the history of the region through an examination of its diverse ecology and multiethnic political economy. Breaking from the Eurocentric narrative tropes of “discovery,” “conquest,” and “frontier,” Zappia’s interior world is a fluid borderland where the practices of trading and raiding are central in linking indigenous, Spanish, Mexican, and American people, ideas, and commodities into fragile interdependent networks emanating from indigenous trade centers and roadways alon

Dr. Edmund Hamann, Dr. Stanton Wortham, Dr. Enrique G. Murillo (Eds.) have provided a fascinating and expansive volume on Latino education in the US that features an array of scholars from around the world, entitled Revisiting Education in the New Latino Diaspora (Information Age Publishing, 2015), part of the Education Policy in Practice: Critical Cultural Studies series. This volume is actually an in-depth update from a pervious book, Education in the New Latino Diaspora, with new demographics, lenses, and perspectives, on new trends and happenings in this ever-changing space. Dr. Hamann joins New Books in Education for the interview to discuss the book. For questions or comments on the podcast, you can also find the host on Twitter at @PoliticsAndEd.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ruben Flores is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas. His book Backroads Pragmatists: Mexico’s Melting Pot and Civil Rights in the United States (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) is the winner of the 2015 book award of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History. Flores recast the long U.S. civil rights movement by framing it within the exchange of ideas between Mexican and U.S. pragmatists. In a thoroughly research transnational history he demonstrates how post-revolutionary Mexican reformers adopted John Dewey’s pragmatism and Franz Boas’s cultural relativism in fostering assimilation of diverse native people into a pan-ethnic republic. Mexican educators Moises Saenzand Rafael Ramirez both studied under Dewey at Columbia University and were eager to apply his philosophy at home. In turn, U.S. reformers looked to Mexico’s scientific state as a living laboratory and a model for assimilating native people and Hispanics of the southwest, and blacks

In Building A Latino Civil Rights Movement: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in New York City (UNC Press, 2014), Assistant Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis Sonia Song-Ha Lee challenges two common misperceptions surrounding the Civil Rights Movement. The first is the presumption that Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans played marginal roles in the advancement of civil rights and social justice causes, and second, that the aims and methods of Latinos diverged from those of African Americans preventing the two groups from building interracial coalitions and cooperating in their pursuit of racial and socioeconomic justice. Focusing on the social and political context of postwar New York City, Dr. Lee describes the issues, people, and organizations that were central in establishing cross-racial coalitions between Puerto Rican and African American parents, students, and activists. Realizing their shared struggle against racism, poverty, and mar

As demographic trends continue to mark the so-called “Latinization” of the U.S., pundits across various media outlets struggle to understand the economic, cultural, and political implications of this reality. In popular discourse, Latinoas/os are often referred to as a monolithic group in terms of cultural practices, voting patterns, and consumer preferences. Of course, Latinas/os are one of the most diverse ethnic groups in the U.S., comprising more than 14 nationalities (including indigenous groups) with variances in language, cultural practices, and political attitudes that mirror their geographic distribution. In Thirteen Ways of Looking At Latino Art (Duke University Press, 2014) the accomplished essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans enters into conversation with the distinguished philosopher Jorge J.E. Gracia around 13 pieces of Latina/o art in order to excavate the underpinnings of Latina/o identity and culture. Each work of art provides the impetus for lively exchanges between Sta

The (re)making of place has composed an essential aspect of Southern California history from the era of Spanish colonialism to the present. In Aztlan and Arcadia: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Creation of Place (NYU Press, 2014) Associate Professor of American Studies at Middlebury College Roberto Lint Sagarena examines the competing narratives of Anglo American conquest and ethnic Mexican reconquest following the U.S. War with Mexico in the mid-19th century. Employing a transnational lens that illuminates the commonalities between Spanish colonizers, Mexican criollos, Anglo American settlers, and ethnic Mexican Californians, Dr. Lint Sagarena argues that the ethno-nationalist histories of Aztlan and Arcadia share commonalities in logic, language, and symbolism that are rooted in religious culture and history. From Anglo American Hispanophilia to Chicana/o indigenismo, Professor Lint Sagarena sheds new light on the region’s long and conflicted history over its multi-ethnic past as well as the understand

Mexican American religious healing – often called curanderismo – is a vital component of life in the US-Mexican borderlands. In his book Border Medicine: A Transcultural History of Mexican American Curanderismo (New York University Press, 2014) – Brett Hendrickson tracks healers going back to the nineteenth century and even before. He argues that these healing practices were never only Mexican American nor were they a sign of an inability to develop modern bio-medicine. They have in fact been shaped in a transcultural context where ideas about metaphysical healing and the efficacy of gifted individuals circulated among Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Anglo-American settlers. Each population has contributed to the development and growing popularity of folk curanderismo. Brett Hendrickson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices