Educating the Enemy: Teaching Nazis and Mexicans in the Cold War Borderlands(U Chicago Press, 2022) begins with the 144 children of Nazi scientists who moved to El Paso, Texas, in 1946 as part of the military program called Operation Paperclip. These German children were bused daily from a military outpost to four El Paso public schools. Though born into a fascist enemy nation, the German children were quickly integrated into the schools and, by proxy, American society. Their rapid assimilation offered evidence that American public schools played a vital role in ensuring the victory of democracy over fascism. Jonna Perrillo not only tells this fascinating story of Cold War educational policy, but she draws an important contrast with another, much more numerous population of children in the El Paso public schools: Mexican Americans. Like everywhere else in the Southwest, Mexican American children in El Paso were segregated into "Mexican" schools, where the children received a vastly different educational experience. Not only were they penalized for speaking Spanish--the only language all but a few spoke due to segregation--they were tracked for low-wage and low-prestige careers, with limited opportunities for economic success.Educating the Enemycharts what two groups of children--one that might have been considered the enemy, the other that was treated as such--reveal about the ways political assimilation has been treated by schools as an easier, more viable project than racial or ethnic assimilation. Listen to an interview with the author here and read an interview inTimeand a piece based on the book in theBoston Review. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
Tejanaland: A Writing Life in Four Acts(Texas A&M UP, 2021)by Teresa Palomo Acosta--poet, historian, author, and activist--spans three decades of her writing, from 1988 through 2018. The collection is divided into four parts: poems, essays, a children's story, and plays. Each work addresses cultural, historical, political, and gender realities that she experienced from her childhood to the present. The plays, set in the Central Texas Blackland Prairies where Acosta was raised, provide a unique Latina vision of memory, identity, and experience and are a vital contribution to Chicana feminist thought. The essays focus on Acosta's literary heroes Jovita González de Mireles, Sara Estela Ramírez, and Elena Zamora O'Shea, important writers who contributed significantly to Tejana literature and to Texas letters. The children's story, "Colchas, Colchitas," is based on Acosta's most notable poem, "My Mother Pieced Quilts," which pays homage to her mother and the many women of her generation who employed needles and thread, creating both practical and symbolic artifacts. This collection is a creative and, indeed, essential expansion of boundaries for what we think of as history, offering a unique and compelling look into the lived experiences and interior contemplations of a Texas artist well worth knowing. Readers will increase their understanding of Tejana experience in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.Tejanalandpromises to become an important addition to the cultural record, informing historical perspectives on the experiences of Tejana women and contributing significantly to the existing body of work from Tejana writers. Tiffany González is an Assistant Professor of History at James Madison University. She is a historian of Chicana/Latinx history, American politics, and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
Mirelsie Velázquez (Associate Professor & Rainbolt Family Endowed Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma) speaks with Natalie Lira (Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) about Lira’s recent book,Laboratory of Deficiency: Sterilization and Confinement in California, 1900-1950s(University of California Press, 2021). Over 20,000 residents of California were sterilized in the first half of the twentieth century. A vast archive of the sterilization request records provides chilling evidence of the identities and family resources of these people. Furthermore, the documents explain why physicians and social workers deemed reproductive intervention to be in the interests of the state. Using the records from the Pacific Colony institution, Lira investigates why young women and men of Mexican origin were disproportionately detained, narrates their experiences of confinement and sterilization, and traces diverse strands testifying to widespread individual and familial resistance. In this conversation, Lira and Velázquez dig deeper into some of the themes addressed in Lira’s book, and reflect broadly on the cultural and racialist assumptions that fuel carceral and sterilization strategies a century ago and in the present day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
Following World War II, the United States enjoyed unprecedented prosperity as the post-war economy exploded. While Americans pondered affluence, U.S. Franciscans focused on the forgotten members of U.S. society, those who had been left out or left behind.Seeing Jesus in the Eyes of the Oppressedtells the story of eight Franciscans and their communities who struggled to create a more just and equitable society. Through eight mini-biographies, Paul T. Murray, professor emeritus at Siena College, explores Franciscan efforts to establish racial and economic justice and to promote peace and nonviolence: Father Nathaniel Machesky led the battle for civil rights in Greenwood, MS; Sister Antona Ebo was one of two African American Sisters at the Selma march; Brother Booker Ashe worked for interracial justice and Black pride in Milwaukee; Sister Thea Bowman celebrated Black gifts to the U.S. Church and worked toward an expression of the faith that was "authentically Black and truly Catholic;" Father Alan McCoy pushed his community and the Church in the United States to greater engagement with Social Justice; Sister Pat Drydyk worked with Cesar Chavez for justice for the farmworkers; Father Joseph Nangle brought solidarity with Latin America to the fore in the U.S. Church, and Father Louis Vitale used civil disobedience to oppose nuclear proliferation, while serving the poor and homeless. In all, the book emphasizes the passion and struggle of Franciscans in the United States to create a more just world within society and within the Church. Allison Isidoreis an Instructor of Record for the Religious Studies department at the University of Alabama. Her research interest is focused on the twentieth-century American Civil Rights Movement and the Catholic Church’s response to racism and the participation of Catholic clergy, nuns, and laypeople in marches, sit-ins, and kneel-ins during the 1950s and 1960s. Allison is also a Video Editor forThe Religious Studies Project, producing videos for the podcast and marketing team. She tweets from@AllisonIsidore1. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
In 1951, Doña Natalia Barraza opened the Nayarit, a Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles. WithA Place at the Nayarit: How a Mexican Restaurant Nourished a Community(U California Press, 2022),historian Natalia Molina traces the life's work of her grandmother, remembered by all who knew her as Doña Natalia--a generous, reserved, and extraordinarily capable woman. Doña Natalia immigrated alone from Mexico to L.A., adopted two children, and ran a successful business. She also sponsored, housed, and employed dozens of other immigrants, encouraging them to lay claim to a city long characterized by anti-Latinx racism. Together, the employees and customers of the Nayarit maintained ties to their old homes while providing one another safety and support. The Nayarit was much more than a popular eating spot: it was an urban anchor for a robust community, a gathering space where ethnic Mexican workers and customers connected with theirpatria chica(their "small country"). That meant connecting with distinctive tastes, with one another, and with the city they now called home. Through deep research and vivid storytelling, Molina follows restaurant workers from the kitchen and the front of the house across borders and through the decades. These people's stories illuminate the many facets of the immigrant experience: immigrants' complex networks of family and community and the small but essential pleasures of daily life, as well as cross-currents of gender and sexuality and pressures of racism and segregation. The Nayarit was a local landmark, popular with both Hollywood stars and restaurant workers from across the city and beloved for its fresh, traditionally prepared Mexican food. But as Molina argues, it was also, and most importantly, a place where ethnic Mexicans and other Latinx L.A. residents could step into the fullness of their lives, nourishing themselves and one another.A Place at the Nayaritis a stirring exploration of how racialized minorities create a sense of belonging. It will resonate with anyone who has felt like an outsider and had a special place where they felt like an insider. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
The air in Los Angeles can be lethal, and nobody knows this better than the city’s Latinx and Asian immigrants, argues Dr. Nadia Kim inRefusing Death: Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA(Stanford UP, 2021). Kim, a professor of Asian and Asian American Studies and Sociology at Loyola Marymount University, spend years interviewing environmental justice activists and other residents of LA’s most polluted neighborhoods to show the depths of environmental injustice in America’s second largest city, and how people in these places conceive of and engage in political action.Refusing Deathprovides a depth of insight into how immigrant communities define themselves, protect their families, and organize to create a more just environment for themselves and for their children. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
To many Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the West was simultaneously the greatest symbol of American opportunity, the greatest story of its history, and the imagined blank slate on which the country's future would be written. From the Spanish-American War in 1898 to the Great Depression's end, from the Mississippi to the Pacific, policymakers at various levels and large-scale corporate investors, along with those living in the West and its borderlands, struggled over who would define modernity, who would participate in the modern American West, and who would be excluded. InMaking a Modern U.S. West: The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders, 1898-1940(U Nebraska Press, 2022)Sarah Deutsch surveys the history of the U.S. West from 1898 to 1940. Centering what is often relegated to the margins in histories of the region--the flows of people, capital, and ideas across borders--Deutsch attends to the region's role in constructing U.S. racial formations and argues that the West as a region was as important as the South in constructing the United States as a "white man's country." While this racial formation was linked to claims of modernity and progress by powerful players, Deutsch shows that visions of what constituted modernity were deeply contested by others. This expansive volume presents the most thorough examination to date of the American West from the late 1890s to the eve of World War II. Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
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." In his bookBrown Church: Five Centuries of Latina/o Social Justice, Theology, and Identity(InterVarsity Press, 2020),Romero considers how this movement has responded to these and other injustices throughout its history by appealing to the belief that God's vision for redemption includes not only heavenly promises but also the transformation of every aspect of our lives and the world. Walking through this history of activism and faith, readers will discover that Latina/o Christians have a heart after God's own. David-James Gonzales(DJ) is Assistant Professor of History at Brigham Young University. He is a historian of migration, urbanization, and social movements in the U.S., and specializes in Latina/o/x politics and social movements. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
Today I spoke to Anjanette Delgado, a Puerto Rican writer and journalist based in Miami who has compiled emblematic stories and essays by writers from many countries who congregate in the city of Miami and the state of Florida. The stories are about those who have been touched by the Florida and Miami experience, and who have made the state their home. Her anthology titledHome in Florida.Latinx Writers and the Literature of Uprootednesspublished by the University of Florida Press Gainesville in 2021 has won the silver medal for the Independent Publishing Book awards. She is also the author ofThe Heartbreak Pill: A noveland theThe Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho.She has written for the The New York Times “Modern Love” column, Vogue, NPR, HBO, the Kenyon Review and the Hong Kong Review. Through this corpus on the immigrant experience, the reader will get the distillation of Florida’s multiculturalism and also gain insights on the in betweenness of the minority and majority in America. On the one hand there are those who feel Miami is a city lost to the American heartland but continue to flock there to enjoy the café cortadito and the myriad joys of having the foreign in the midst of Sameness. And then there the displaced and uprooted in a “halfway house” of exile. A variety of genres: poetry, love letters, prose songs, jokes all hang together in this poignant compilation of the involuntary wanderer. Minni Sawhneyis a professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Delhi Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies
InAcademic Apartheid: Race and the Criminalization of Failure in an American Suburb(U California Press, 2022), sociologist Sean J. Drake addresses long-standing problems of educational inequality from a nuanced perspective, looking at how race and class intersect to affect modern school segregation. Drawing on more than two years of ethnographic observation and dozens of interviews at two distinct high schools in a racially diverse Southern California suburb, Drake unveils hidden institutional mechanisms that lead to the overt segregation and symbolic criminalization of Black, Latinx, and lower-income students who struggle academically. His work illuminates how institutional definitions of success contribute to school segregation, how institutional actors leverage those definitions to justify inequality, and the ways in which local immigrant groups use their ethnic resources to succeed.Academic Apartheidrepresents a new way forward for scholars whose work sits at the intersection of education, race and ethnicity, class, and immigration. Mickell Carter is a doctoral student in the department of history at Auburn University. She can be reached atmzc0152@auburn.eduand on twitter @MickellCarter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/latino-studies