Becoming Mexican American

Becoming Mexican American: Ethnicity, Culture, and Identity in Chicano Los Angeles, 1900-1945

by George J. Sanchez
Twentieth-century Los Angeles has been the locus of one of the most profound and complex interactions between variant cultures in American history. Yet this study is among the first to examine the relationship between ethnicity and identity among the largest immigrant group to that city. By focusing on Mexican immigrants to Los Angeles from 1900 to 1945, George J. Sánchez explores the process by which temporary sojourners altered their orientation to that of permanent residents, thereby laying the foundation for a new Mexican-American culture. Analyzing not only formal programs aimed at these newcomers by the United States and Mexico, but also the world created by these immigrants through family networks, religious practice, musical entertainment, and work and consumption patterns, Sánchez uncovers the creative ways Mexicans adapted their culture to life in the United States. When a formal repatriation campaign pushed thousands to return to Mexico, those remaining in Los Angeles launched new campaigns to gain civil rights as ethnic Americans through labor unions and New Deal politics. The immigrant generation, therefore, laid the groundwork for the emerging Mexican-American identity of their children.

Italians Then, Mexicans Now

Italians Then, Mexicans Now: Immigrant Origins and Second-Generation Progress, 1890 To 2000

by Joel Perlmann

Joel Perlmann offers a sustained comparison of immigrant and second-generation wellbeing over the past hundred years. Using the latest immigration data from the census and other recent studies - as well as a century of census data - Perlmann paints a more optimistic picture of immigrant prospects than is envisioned by many other scholars of immigration.

Rich with historical data, Italians Then, Mexicans Now persuasively argues that today's Mexican immigrants are making slow but steady socioeconomic progress and may one day reach parity with earlier immigrant groups who moved up into the heart of American middle-class society.

The House on Mango Street

The House on Mango Street

by Sandra Cisneros

Here is Sandra Cisnero's greatly admired and best-selling novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape. Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong - not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

Chicano!

Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement
by F. Arturo Rosales

Chicano! The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement designates four major episodes of the Mexican civil rights struggle in the United States. Chapter One features efforts of the "lost-land" generation (southwest Mexican natives) to stem property losses, maintain their culture and assert civil rights given them by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo after the US takeover of the Southwest in the mid-nineteenth century. The second portion, Chapters Two to Five, views immigrant attempts in the early part of this century to protect themselves from a hostile American public. In the effort to safeguard their civil rights, an elaborate Mexico Lindo (Pretty Mexico) nationalism emerged that immigrants used to rally around issues of repression. Chapters Six and Seven look at the optimistic Mexican American generation made up primarily of children of immigrants who did not have ties to Mexico. Not only did this generation demand the civil rights to which they were entitled, but they also strove to acculturate to Anglo American culture without turning their backs on their Mexican heritage. In addition, Mexican Americans in this era made the greatest attempts to empower themselves as workers. The final and most lengthy section of the book traces the evolution of the Chicano Movement and assesses its legacy. It takes the reader through the most turbulent days of civil unrest and grass-roots organizing in Mexican American history.

Mexifornia

Mexifornia: A State of Becoming

by Victor Davis Hanson

This book is part history, part political analysis and part memoir. It is an intensely personal book about what has changed in California over the last quarter century.

Hanson's primary worry is steadily rising illegal immigration into a welfare state with expanding entitlements and waning commitment to the history and virtues of Western civilization, an admittedly imperfect, coercive consensus that nonetheless held together a uniquely successful, multiethnic nation. The emerging Mexifornia is becoming "not quite Mexico and not quite America either."

Rebel Without A Crew: Or how a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player

Rebel Without A Crew: Or how a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker with $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player
by Robert Rodriguez

In his own witty and straight-shooting style, Robert Rodriguez discloses all the strategies and innovative techniques he used to make El Mariachi on the cheap—including filming before noon so he wouldn't have to buy the actors lunch. You'll witness Rodriguez's whirlwind, 'Mariachi-style' filmmaking, where creativity—not money—is used to solve problems. Culminating in his "Ten-Minute Film School," this book may render conventional film-school programs obsolete. Rodriguez also offers an insider's view of the amazing courtship he enjoyed with Hollywood's A-list. It's an entertaining tour of Hollywood's deal-making machine as he navigates you through studio meetings, pitch sessions, and power lunches. Candidly divulging all the tactics and tempting lures the warring studios used to win him over, he admits that he barely escaped with his movie and his soul intact. Exploding the conventional wisdom that you need at least a million dollars to make a feature film, this nuts-and-bolts account features the full "El Mariachi" shooting script, postproduction tips, film festival anecdotes, and publicity blitz secrets. He demonstrates the countless ways to do for free what the pros spend thousands (or more) on without a second thought. "Rebel Without a Crew" is both one man's remarkable story and the essential guide for anyone who has a celluloid story to tell and the determination to see it through.

Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border

Wetback Nation: The Case for Opening the Mexican-American Border
by Peter Laufer

Journalist Laufer lays out the case for opening the U.S.-Mexican border to the free passage of Mexicans who wish to come North. He makes the case on human, political, and legal terms, frequently referencing the personal stories of those affected by current failed border policies in order to illustrate the problems caused by not doing so.

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez

Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
by Richard Rodriguez

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.

Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.
by Luis J. Rodriguez

By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East L.A. gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests, then watched with increasing fear as drugs, murder, suicide, and senseless acts of street crime claimed friends and family members.

Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning Chicano poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more -- until his son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-learned lesson for the next generation.