Titles were submitted to NACCS Chair for Noticias de NACCS
Land Uprising: Native Story Power and the Insurgent Horizons of Latinx Indigeneity by Simón Ventura Trujillo
Simón Ventura Trujillo (Assistant Professor, NYU English) has published his first scholarly monograph entitled Land Uprising: Native Story Power and the Insurgent Horizons of Latinx Indigeneity (University of Arizona Press, 2020). The book engages with New Mexican land grant struggles to rethink the relationship between Indigenous land reclamation and Latinx and Chicanx Indigeneities.
Special issue on the 50th anniversary of Ethnic Studies for the Ethnic Studies Review edited by Dr. Xamuel Bañales and Dr. Leece Lee-Oliver
The special issue on the 50th anniversary of Ethnic Studies for the Ethnic Studies Review, published by the University of California Press, was released in December of 2019. Co-edited by Dr. Xamuel Bañales and Dr. Leece Lee-Oliver, the special issue features over twenty essays that engage with the foundations, meanings, and/or futurity of Ethnic Studies, illustrating critical dialogues and efforts to maintain the field as a liberatory project. The journal features essays from a variety of activists, artists, and scholars engaged in Chicano/a/x-Latino/a/x Studies, including: Ysidro Macias, Jennie Luna, Malaquias Montoya, and Nelson Maldonado-Torres. To access the journal please visit https://esr.ucpress.edu/content/42/2?current-issue=y.
The Tenure-Track Process for Chicana and Latina Faculty: Experiences of Resisting and Persisting in the Academy edited by Patricia A. Perez
This anthology addresses the role of postsecondary institutional structures and policy in shaping the
tenure-track process for Chicana and Latina faculty in higher education. Major topics include the importance of early socialization, intergenerational mentorship, culturally relevant faculty programming, and institutional challenges and support structures. The aim of this volume is to highlight practical and policy implications and interventions for scholars, academics, and institutions to facilitate tenure and promotion for women faculty of color. Patricia A. Perez is Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Fullerton. 20% Discount Available – enter the code FLR40 at checkout. https://www.routledge.com/The-Tenure-Track-Process-for-Chicana-and-Latina-Faculty-Experiences-of/Perez/p/book/9780367225810
Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United States (3rd. Ed.) by Manuel G. Gonzalez
Responding to shifts in the political and economic experiences of Mexicans in America, this newly revised and expanded edition of Mexicanos provides a relevant and contemporary consideration of this vibrant community. Emerging from the ruins of Aztec civilization and from centuries of Spanish contact with indigenous people, Mexican culture followed the Spanish colonial frontier northward and put its distinctive mark on what became the southwestern United States. Shaped by their Indian and Spanish ancestors, deeply influenced by Catholicism, and often struggling to respond to political and economic precarity, Mexicans play an important role in US society even as the dominant Anglo culture strives to assimilate them. With new maps, updated appendices, and a new chapter providing an up-to-date consideration of the immigration debate centered on Mexican communities in the US, this new edition of Mexicanos provides a thorough and balanced contribution to understanding Mexicans’ history and their vital importance to 21st-century America.
The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color Through Social Activismby Patricia Zavella I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book, The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color Through Social Activism, which is based on ethnographic research in multiple sites. It will be published by New York University Press in May of 2020 (https://nyupress.org/9781479812707/the-movement-for-reproductive-justice/). Here is the book blurb: “Shows how reproductive justice organizations’ collaborative work across racial lines provides a compelling model for other groups to successfully influence change.
“Patricia Zavella experienced first-hand the trials and judgments imposed on working professional mothers: her commitment to academia was questioned because of her pregnancy; she was shamed for having children while ‘too young;’ and when she finally achieved a tenure track position in 1983, she felt out of place as one of the few female faculty members with children.
These experiences sparked Zavella’s interest in the movement for reproductive justice. In this book, she draws on five years of ethnographic research to explore collaborations among women of color engaged in activism on behalf of reproductive justice. Many organizations focused on reproductive justice activism are racially specific, such as the California Latinas for Reproductive Justice or Black Women for Wellness. Yet Zavella documents how many of these organizations have built cross-sector coalitions, sharing resources and supporting each other through different campaigns or struggles. While the coalitions are often regional—or even national—these organizations have specific constituencies diverse by race, sexual identities, legal status, or ethnicity, presenting unique challenges and opportunities for the women involved.
Zavella argues that these organizations provide a compelling model for negotiating across differences within constituencies. In the context of the “war” on women’s reproductive rights and its disproportionate effect on women of color, The Movement for Reproductive Justice demonstrates that a truly intersectional movement built on grassroots organizing, culture shift work, and policy advocacy for women’s human rights can offer visions of strength, resiliency, and dignity for all.”
Patricia Zavella is Professor Emerita, Latin American & Latino Studies Department, at University of California, Santa Cruz.
Cabañuelas by Norma Elia Cantú
Nena leaves Laredo, Texas, and moves to Madrid, Spain, to research the historical roots of traditional fiestas in Laredo. Immersing herself in post-Franco Spain and its rich history, its food, music, and fiestas, Nena finds herself falling for Paco, a Spaniard who works in publishing. Nena’s research and experiences teach her about who she is, where she comes from, and what is important to her, but as her work comes to a close, Nena must decide where she can best be true to her entire self: in Spain with Paco or in Laredo, her home, where her job and family await her return.
Meditación Fronteriza: Poems of Love, Life, and Labor by Norma Elia Cantú
The poems are a celebration of culture, tradition, and creativity that navigates themes of love, solidarity, and political transformation. Deeply personal yet warmly relatable, these poems flow from Spanish to English gracefully. With Gloria Anzaldúa’s foundational work as an inspiration, Meditación Fronteriza unveils unique images that provide nuance and depth to the narrative of the borderlands.
meXicana Fashion: Politics, Self-Adornment, and Identity Construction edited by Aida Hurtado & Norma E. Cantú
Fifteen scholars examine the social identities, class hierarchies, regionalisms, and other codes of communication that are exhibited or perceived in meXicana clothing styles.
Insurgent Aztlán: The Liberating Power of Cultural Resistance by Ernesto Todd Mireles
Insurgent Aztlán: The Liberating Power of Cultural Resistance reconstructs the relationship between social political insurgent theory and Xicano literature, film and myth. Based on decades of organizing experience and scholarly review of the writings of recognized observers and leaders of the process of national liberation movements, the author, Ernesto Todd Mireles, shares a remarkable work of scholarship that incorporates not only the essence of earlier resistance writing, but provides a new paradigm of liberation guidelines for the particular situation of Mexican Americans. Mireles makes a solid case for addressing the decades-long decline of Mexican American identity within itself and broadly among sectors of American society by asserting the powerful role of culture and history, each value unable to exist without the other, in the preservation and political advancement of a people. In the case of Mexican Americans, which consists of an estimated 40 million people and boasts the highest birth rate in the U.S., they constitute “a nation within a nation”. The intellectual challenge, Mireles asserts, is connecting insurgent social political theory with the existing body of Xicano literature, film and myth. The organizing challenge is how to build an insurgent identity that fosters a “return to history” to build a consensus among Mexican Americans, who are a complex collective of culturally, educationally, politically, and economically diverse people, to reclaim their historical presence in the Americas and the world. Insurgent Aztlán must be read by students from high school to graduate studies, their professors, organizers in the fields and factories, union shops, and urban community organizations, wherever Mexican Americans sense the need to re-evaluate their goals and aspirations for themselves and their families.
Released January 2020, Promotional video: https://youtu.be/XNTxHervB_E
Somos en Escritos Literary Foundation, Ernesto Todd Mireles, MSW., Ph.D. Social Justice Community Organizer Master program Coordinator, Frantz Fanon Community Strategy Center Faculty, Prescott College
Spring 2020 – Vol. 45 No. 1