Books in the Chicana Matters series

Analyzing the "in-between" spaces in Moraga's writing where race, gender, class, and sexuality intermingle, this first book-length study of Moraga's work focuses on her writing of the body and related material practices of sex, desire, and pleasure.

In this literary novel set in nineteenth-century Texas, a Tejana lesbian cowgirl embarks on an adventure after the fall of the Alamo.Micaela Campos witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela's Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela's travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela's journey and her romance with a Black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic...This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. Perez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation's imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that Perez explorespolitical climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American Westare current today.';Perez's sparse, clean writing style is a blend of Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, and Annie Proulx. This makes for a quick and engrossing reading experience as the narrative has a fluid quality about it.' Alicia Gaspar de Alba, professor and chair of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, and author of Sor Juana's Second Dream';Riveting... Emma Perez captures well the violence and the chaos of the southwest borderlands during the time of territorial and international disputes in the 1800s.... Perez vividly depicts the conflicts between nations with the authority of a historian and with language belonging to a poet. A fine, fine read.' Helena Maria Viramontes, author of Their Dogs Came with Them';Perez's new novel... Powerfully presents a revenge tale from an unusual point of view, that of a displaced Chicana in 1836 Texas.... The writing is sharp and clever. The dialogue is realistic.' Lambda Literary, Lambda Award Finalist';Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what's going to happen at the endbut you're wrong.' The Gay & Lesbian Review

Drawing on a wealth of oral histories from pioneering Chicana activists, as well as the vibrant print culture through which they articulated their agenda and built community, this book presents the first full-scale investigation of the social and politica

A fascinating study of the transnational experiences of Mexicans who immigrated from San Ignacio Cerro Gordo, Jalisco, to Detroit, Michigan.

Bringing together diverse perspectives, including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, semiotics, and textual analysis, this is the first anthology to focus exclusively on the murders of more than five hundred women and girls in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico

A study of three women's lives in colonial California and what they reveal about gendered colonial relations and power hierarchies.

Offering a new interpretation of cultural nationalism in Chicana/o identity, this provocative work examines the relationship between globalization and the rise of feminism and gay/lesbian activism.

An innovative application of four social types-the downtrodden Peladita/Peladito and the zoot-suited Pachuca/Pachuco-that illuminates working-class subjects in a broad spectrum of Mexican and Mexican American cultural production.

The first study of Portillo and her films, this collection is collaborative and multifaceted in approach, emphasizing aspects of authorial creativity, audience reception, and production processes typically hidden from view.

A powerful story of losses, triumphs, and the strong ties that bind a working-class Tejano family in the Texas panhandle.

A comparative reading of literature by Mexicanas and Chicanas, including Sandra Cisneros, Laura Esquivel, Carmen Boullosa, and Helena Maria Viramontes, that raises compelling questions about the very nature of cultural constructs in literature.

An exploration into how Mexican-origin women's reproduction has been stereotyped and demonized in the United States.

A model for telling the multicultural history of the American West, starting with Napa County, California.

Placing texts of Chicana/o indigenism and nationalism alongside European and Euro-American ethnographic, travel, and journalistic writing, this is the first comprehensive, comparative literary study of its kind.

The first history of Chicana lesbian writing from the 1970s until today.

A series of wide-ranging essays on the growth--and marginalization--of Chicana/Latina literature, criticism, and art.

A firsthand history of a Chicana women's political theatre group that operated in the 1970s and 1980s in San Diego.

The first comparative study of the literature and cultures of three distinct yet interrelated ethnic groups: Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and Chicanos.

An anthology of vibrant responses to Alma Lopez's controversial print Our Lady, exploring critical issues of censorship, religion, and the female body.

Using interdisciplinary performance studies and cultural studies frameworks, this title examines the cultural representation of queer sexuality in the contemporary cultural production of Mexican female and Chicana performance and visual artists.