|
 |
|
Vicki L.
Ruiz is
Dean of
the
School
of
Humanities
and
Professor
of
History
and
Chicano/Latino
Studies
at the
University
of
California,
Irvine.
She and
Virginia
Sanchez-Korrol
are co-editors
of
Latinas
in the
United
States:
A
Historical
Encyclopedia,
a three-volume
set
published
in 2006.
She is
also the
author
of From
Out of
the
Shadows:
Mexican
Women in
Twentieth-Century
America.
Dean
Ruiz is
the
current
President
of the
American
Studies
Association. |
|
1900-1940
María Montoya
fuses landscape,
occupation, and home
making in her study of
Hispanas in Colorado
coal towns during the
early 1900s, revealing
through photographs how
company representations
of an “American” home
influenced their lives.
Yolanda Chávez Leyva
underscores the
challenges Mexican
youngsters faced in
negotiating border
crossings and crafting
border identities,
important topics given
that between 1900 and
1940, as many one-half
of all Mexican
immigrants were children.
Gabriela Arredondo
examines of lives of
Mexican immigrant women
who called Chicago home
during the 1920s and
1930s, teasing out how
their memories shaped
their migration and
settlement experiences.
1940-2000
Carmen Teresa
Whalen chronicles
the migrations of
Puertorriqueñas to New
York City after World
War II through the
lenses of garment
factories and trade
unions, mindful of the
transnational ties
between women in the Big
Apple and the Island.
As one of the first
Latinas to earn a Ph.D.
in History, Virginia
Sánchez Korrol shares a
haunting memoir of
growing up Nuyorican
during the 1940s and
1950s, a voracious
younger reader who in
traveling to different
worlds through her
library card never found
her own.
Marisela Chávez
complicates our
understanding of Latina
feminism through her
study of Chicana
participation at the
1975 International
Women’s Year Conference
in Mexico City in which
their search for a
global sisterhood had
unexpected consequences.
Elizabeth Salas
examines the recent rise
of Mexican American
women as elected
officials in the state
of Washington, women who
pursue divergent
political agendas though
most share a farm worker
childhood.
In her study of Tucson,
Arizona, Lydia Otero
underlines the
importance of historic
preservation to Latino
communities, noting that
in 2002, out of over
67,000 national historic
sites, only 73
represented Hispanic
heritage.
These essays move beyond
a contributionist or “we
are here, too” narrative,
but reveal how
transnational spaces do
not require travel
across vast oceans but
occur within and across
the Americas. The search
for home and homeland,
whether through physical
movement or personal
memory, is an essential
theme in Latina history.
In the words of María
Montoya, “We use memory
to situate ourselves in
the world.”
By Vicki L. Ruiz
|
