Showing titles in Latin American Studies

Hay una región del mundo donde veinte países y más de 400 millones de personas comparten una lengua, una historia, una cultura, preocupaciones y esperanzas. La conocemos mal; conocemos sobre todo sus mitos, sus reflejos, sus lugares comunes; la pensamos tal como eraen otros tiempos. Esta región se llama o se podría llamar Ñamérica –y este libro quiere contarla y entenderla tal como es ahora.

Racial Innocence will challenge what you thought about racism and bias and demonstrate that it’s possible for a historically marginalized group to experience discrimination and also be discriminatory. Racism is deeply complex, and law professor and comparative race relations expert Tanya Katerí Hernández exposes “the Latino racial innocence cloak” that often veils Latino complicity in racism. As Latinos are the second-largest ethnic group in the US, this revelation is critical to dismantling systemic racism.

In The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, veteran baseball writer Bruce Markusen tells the story of one of the most likable and significant teams in the history of professional sports. In addition to the fact that they fielded the first all-minority lineup in major league history, the 1971 Pirates are noteworthy for the team's inspiring individual performances.

Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a "minority student" who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation - from his past, his parents, his culture - and so describes the high price of "making it" in middle-class America.

Weaving personal narrative with political analysis, Community as Rebellion offers a meditation on creating liberatory spaces for students and faculty of color within academia. Much like other women scholars of color, Lorgia Garcia Peña has struggled against the colonizing, racializing, classist, and unequal structures that perpetuate systemic violence within universities.

As the heyday of the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s to early '70s fades further into history and as more and more of its important figures pass on, so too does knowledge of its significance. Thus, Chicano Movement for Beginners is an important attempt to stave off historical amnesia. It seeks to shed light on the multifaceted civil rights struggle known as "El Movimiento" that galvanized the Mexican American community, from laborers to student activists, giving them not only a political voice to combat prejudice and inequality, but also a new sense of cultural awareness....

Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture‚ yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos‚ Laura Gomez illuminates the fascinating race-making‚ unmaking‚ and remaking of Latino identity that has spanned centuries‚ leaving a permanent imprint on how race operates in the United States today.

As the largest minority in the country, Latino Americans make up an integral part of American history and continue to make major social, cultural, and political contributions. Latino Americans, vividly and candidly tells how the story of Latino Americans is the story of the United States, revealing the personal struggles and successes of immigrants, poets, soldiers, and others who have made an impact on history.

For five hundred years, Latina/o culture and identity have been shaped by their challenges to the religious, socio-economic, and political status quo, whether in opposition to Spanish colonialism, Latin American dictatorships, US imperialism in Central America, the oppression of farmworkers, or the current exploitation of undocumented immigrants. Christianity has played a significant role in that movement at every stage. Robert Chao Romero, the son of a Mexican father and a Chinese immigrant mother, explores the history and theology of what he terms the "Brown Church."

Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war, the United States was a distant fantasy to identical twins Ernesto and Raul Flores - until, at age 17, a deadly threat from the region’s brutal gangs forces them to flee the only home they’ve ever known. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the Flores twins as they make their way across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother in Oakland, CA.

Spanning more than 200 years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism.

A major work on the history of Mexicans in Texas and the relations between Mexicans and Anglos.

Upon becoming a new mother, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect with her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality. In Magical/Realism, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all.

On the surface, Arce's story sounds like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noe Álvarez worked at an apple-packing plant alongside his mother. A university scholarship offered escape, but as a first-generation Latino college-goer, Álvarez struggled to fit in. At 19, he learned about a Native American/First Nations movement called the Peace and Dignity Journeys, epic marathons meant to renew cultural connections across North America. He dropped out of school and joined a group runners, all fleeing difficult beginnings. Telling their stories and his own, Álvarez writes about a four-month-long journey from Canada to Guatemala.

Mexican witchcraft, or brujeria, has long been an integral part of traditional Mexican culture that permeates all strata of social hierarchy, ethnicity, or level of education. "Brujeria de Rancho" refers to brujeria as it is practiced in the rural areas of Mexico. There, the brujos de Ranch offer their healing and divinatory powers, acting as advisors, and even meting out justice through the use of cursing and hexing for people who are often not able to pay lawyers' fees.

In this illuminating work, immigrant rights activist Aviva Chomsky shows how “illegality” and “undocumentedness” are concepts that were created to exclude and exploit. With a focus on US policy, she probes how people, especially Mexican and Central Americans, have been assigned this status—and to what ends.

This updated and expanded edition is the first and only book to offer a leadership model firmly based on the Latino experience and culture. By 2045, Latinos will make up one in four Americans. They are projected to be 78 percent of the new entries into the labor force in the next 10 years.

"Latino" is the most open-ended and loosely defined of the major race categories in the United States. Our Migrant Souls: A Meditation on Race and the Meanings and Myths of "Latino" assembles the Pulitzer Prize winner Héctor Tobar's personal experiences as the son of Guatemalan immigrants and the stories told to him by his Latinx students to offer a spirited rebuke to racist ideas about Latino people.

Valeria Aloe’s Uncolonized Latinas: Transforming Our Mindsets and Rising Together lays out an unprecedented detailed map of the Latino mindset and what is holding the community back from achieving its highest potential. Along the way, we meet immigrant Latinas and daughters of immigrants who, through trials and tribulations, have uncolonized their limiting mindsets and have found success in their lives and career.