Memories and Migrations

In Memories and Migrations, Vicki L. Ruiz and John R. Chávez present a first-rate collection that seeks to transcend U.S. history and borderlands history by examining how twentieth-century Latinas have defined themselves across interstate, international, and conceptual boundaries. The editors pose a central question: how have Latinas “engendered region”? In the preface, Chávez tells us that the collection evolved as the contributing authors exchanged ideas and then presented their work to scholars and the public at a symposium designed to “celebrate and assess” the “maturing historical field” of Latina history (p. ix). While a more traditional geographic focus on the Southwest borderlands was initially considered, the book took a more ambitious scope, with discussion of Latinas in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes region, and those who cross back and forth from Mexico. In the introduction, Ruiz argues that the collection addresses a trend in Latina historiography where “immigration, sexuality, generation, wage work, and cultural coalescence have frequently overshadowed region as a distinct category of analysis” (p. 1).The case studies explore how women of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage locate identity as shaped by gender, generation, class, and region. In part 1, María E. Montoya describes women’s experience in Southwest mining company towns and Lydia R. Otero relates an effort to protect a local Latino heritage site in Tucson, Arizona. In part 2, “Migration and Settlement,” Yolanda Chávez Leyva, Gabriela F. Arredondo, and Carmen Teresa Whalen offer case studies on the experience of Mexican children crossing the Mexican border in the early 1900s, mujeridad (womanhood) in Chicago in the 1920s – 1940s, and unionization among Puerto Rican garment workers in New York. Part 3 includes chapters by Elizabeth Salas, Marisela R. Chávez, and Virginia Sánchez-Korrol, who address, respectively, the evolution of identity and political action among Latinas in Washington State, the dissonant experience of California Chicanas in the International Women’s Year in Mexico City, and one Latina’s academic journey. Each of the eight essays is solidly grounded in documentary evidence, and overall, the methodologies are diverse. Both Chávez Leyva and Whalen use immigration documents to reveal how women and children navigated the boundaries of race, class, and gender as well as physical borders and geographic space. Chávez Leyva examines Immigration and Naturalization Service interviews that document diverse circumstances, motivations, and rhetorical strategies of children and families who crossed and recrossed the border in pursuit of commerce, family socializing, and legal migration. Arredondo profiles women who embraced new opportunity by migrating to Chicago and often challenged traditional gender norms. The photographs Arredondo reproduces from naturalization petition files are the only visual documents in the collection; they offer students and scholars the opportunity to consider these official portraits as a form of visual representation of Latinas. Sánchez-Korrol’s Boricua autoethnography is profoundly engaging; it contributes an important example of how individuals have affected the evolution of Puerto Rican and Latino/a studies in the United States.While the editors and authors agree that region is central to identity formation, it is not clear if they agree on key terms like Chicana, Boricua, and Latina. Just as there is no single or unified Latina experience, the meaning of these terms is often contested. Some consideration of how these identifiers have evolved, and continue to evolve, would have been helpful. Significantly, the collection of articles persuasively demonstrates that individual Latinas and Latina groups define themselves subjectively and that identities change over time. Reading the entire collection allows one to consider Latina identity as historical and regional consciousness that transcends borders.The editors’ choice to focus on women of Mexican-American and Puerto Rican heritage makes sense because these two groups comprise three-quarters of all Latinos in the United States. Additionally, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans have persistent patterns of transnational movements and, within the United States, they share “congruent patterns of economic segmentation and discrimination” (p. 2). Both general readers and scholars should read this excellent collection, which, although it focuses on Latina history, also contributes to a more nuanced understanding of United States history. Ruiz frames the discussion in terms of “cultural coalescence,” which transcends models of assimilation or resistance to discrimination and subordination. These essays provide further evidence that as they interact socially, work, and consume in their everyday lives, Latinas navigate through intersections and boundaries that are both spatial and cultural, using complex and evolving gendered ethnoracial identities. This collection’s examination or “mapping” of twentieth-century Boricua and Chicana identity should encourage further exploration of the complex historical and contemporary experience of U.S. Latinas

Archaeology · Art · Ethnology · Genealogy · Historiography · Identity (music) · Immigration · Latino studies · Maya · Settlement (finance) · Sociology · Anthropology · Cuban History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies

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