Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano has described U.S. and Latin American culture as continually hobbled by amnesia - unable, or unwilling, to remember the influence of mestizos and indigenous populations. In Mestizos Come Home! author Robert Con Davis-Undiano documents the great awakening of Mexican American and Latino culture since the 1960s that has challenged this omission in collective memory. He maps a new awareness of the United States as intrinsically connected to the broader context of the Americas. At once native and new to the American Southwest, Mexican Americans have "come home" in a profound sense: they have reasserted their right to claim that land and U.S. culture as their own.
Mestizos Come Home! explores key areas of change that Mexican Americans have brought to the U.S. These areas include the recognition of mestizo identity, especially its historical development across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the re-emergence of indigenous relationships to land, and the promotion of Mesoamerican conceptions of the human body. Clarifying and bridging critical gaps in cultural history, Davis-Undiano considers important artifacts from the past and present, connecting the "casta" (caste) paintings of eighteenth-century Mexico to modern-day artists including John Valadez, Alma Lopez, and Luis A. Jimenez Jr. He also examines such community celebrations as Day of the Dead, Cinco de Mayo, and lowrider car culture as examples of mestizo influence on mainstream American culture. Woven throughout is the search for meaning and understanding of mestizo identity.
Everyone who makes the journey faces a terrible choice. Hundreds of thousands of people arrive every year at the US-Mexico border. They have traveled far from their homes. An overwhelming share of them come from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, although many migrants will come from farther away. Some are fleeing persecution, others crime or hunger. Very often it will not be their first attempt to cross the border. They may have already been deported from the United States, but it remains their only hope for safety and prosperity. Their homes have become uninhabitable. They will take their chances.
This vast and unremitting crisis did not spring up overnight. As Jonathan Blitzer dramatizes with forensic, unprecedented reporting, it is the result of decades of misguided policy and sweeping corruption. Brilliantly weaving the stories of Central Americans whose lives have been devastated by chronic political conflict and violence with those of American activists and the politicians responsible for the country's tragically tangled immigration policy, Blitzer reveals the full, layered picture for the first time.
Everyone Who is Gone is Here is an odyssey of struggle and resilience. In astonishing detail, Blitzer tells the story of the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and thus delves into the beating heart of American life itself. This is a vital and epic story. It has shaped the nation's turbulent politics and culture in countless ways - and will decide its future.
The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today.
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November 1930, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York. Still, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental.
Only twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera, she was at a crossroads in her life, and this new place, one filled with magnificent beauty, horrific poverty, racial tension, anti-Semitism, ethnic diversity, bland Midwestern food, and a thriving music scene, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear, cracks in her marriage widened, and tragedy struck twice while she was living in Detroit.
Frida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in "Gringolandia", a place Frida couldn't always understand. But it's precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world-famous Frida Kahlo.
Because of our shared English language, as well as the celebrated origin tales of the Mayflower and the rebellion of the British colonies, the United States has prized its Anglo heritage above all others. However, as Carrie Gibson explains with great depth and clarity in El Norte, the nation has much older Spanish roots--ones that have long been unacknowledged or marginalized. The Hispanic past of the United States predates the arrival of the Pilgrims by a century, and has been every bit as important in shaping the nation as it exists today.
El Norte chronicles the sweeping and dramatic history of Hispanic North America from the arrival of the Spanish in the early 16th century to the present--from Ponce de Leon's initial landing in Florida in 1513 to Spanish control of the vast Louisiana territory in 1762 to the Mexican-American War in 1846 and up to the more recent tragedy of post-hurricane Puerto Rico and the ongoing border acrimony with Mexico. Interwoven in this stirring narrative of events and people are cultural issues that have been there from the start but which are unresolved to this day: language, belonging, community, race, and nationality. Seeing them play out over centuries provides vital perspective at a time when it is urgently needed.
In 1883, Walt Whitman meditated on his country's Spanish past: 'We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them,' predicting that 'to that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts.' That future is here, and El Norte, a stirring and eventful history in its own right, will make a powerful impact on our national understanding.
In The Food of Oaxaca, chef Alejandro Ruiz introduces home cooks to the vibrant foods of his home state--"the culinary capital of Mexico" (CNN)--with more than 50 recipes, both ancestral and original. Divided into three parts, the book covers the traditional dishes of the region, where Ruiz grew up; the cuisine of the Oaxacan coast, where he spent many years; and the food he serves today at his acclaimed restaurant, Casa Oaxaca. Here are rustic recipes for making your own tortillas, and preparing memelas, tamales, and moles, as well as Ruiz's own creations, like Duck Tacos with Coloradito, Jicama Tacos, and Oaxacan Chocolate Mousse.
Interspersed are thoughtful essays on dishes, ingredients, kitchen tools, and local traditions that transport the reader to Oaxaca, along with an extensive glossary to help American readers understand the culinary culture of Mexico. Also included are recommendations for the best places to eat in Oaxaca, making this an indispensable volume for home cooks and travelers alike.
A Monsoon Rising
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Onyx Storm (Wing and Claw Collection)
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Say You'll Remember Me
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Those Beyond the Wall
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The Sirens
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We Refuse
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The Waiting Game
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Tripped
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The Schubert Treatment
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Twelve Trees
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The Bullet Swallower
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Somewhere Between Bitter and Sweet
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Of Women and Salt
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Mexican Gothic
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The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
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