Synopses & Reviews
The U.S.-Mexico border is frequently presented by contemporary media as a violent and dangerous place. But that is not a new perception. For decades the border has been constructed as a topographic metaphor for all forms of illegality, in which an ineffable link between space and violence is somehow assumed. The sociological and cultural implications of violence have recently emerged at the forefront of academic discussions about the border. And yet few studies have been devoted to one of its most disturbing manifestations: gender violence. This book analyzes this pervasive phenomenon, including the femicides in Ciudad Juárez that have come to exemplify, at least for the media, its most extreme manifestation.
Contributors to this volume propose that the study of gender-motivated violence requires interpretive and analytical strategies that draw on methods reaching across the divide between the social sciences and the humanities. Through such an interdisciplinary conversation, the book examines how such violence is (re)presented in oral narratives, newspaper reports, films and documentaries, novels, TV series, and legal discourse. It also examines the role that the media have played in this process, as well as the legal initiatives that might address this pressing social problem.
Together these essays offer a new perspective on the implications of, and connections between, gendered forms of violence and topics such as mechanisms of social violence, the micro-social effects of economic models, the asymmetries of power in local, national, and transnational configurations, and the particular rhetoric, aesthetics, and ethics of discourses that represent violence.
Review
“This book contributes to literary and cultural studies and especially to communications, with fascinating critiques of the print and television media in Ciudad Juárez.” —Kathleen Staudt, author of Violence and Activism at the Border: Gender, Fear, and Everyday Life in Ciudad Juárez
Review
"Curious Unions is a pioneering work. It should be recognized for its detailed research, including its extensive use of community-based oral histories and its proposed new theories regarding how Mexican workers strengthened their own community and survived the economic transformations of the region."and#8212;Margo McBane, American Historical Review
Synopsis
Contributors to this pathbreaking volume examine violence in the "borderland" between the United States and Mexico, particularly violence against women and sexual minorities. Together they offer a new perspective on the connections between gendered forms of violence and a wide range of topics that cross conventional borders between the social sciences and the humanities.
Synopsis
Cand#233;sar E. Chand#225;vez came to Oxnard, California, in 1958, twenty years after he lived briefly in the city as a child with his migrant farmworker family during the Great Depression. This time Chand#225;vez returned as the organizer of the Community Service Organization to support the unionization campaign of the United Packinghouse Workers of America. Together the two groups challenged the agricultural industryand#8217;s use of braceros (imported contract laborers) who displaced resident farmworkers.
The Mexican and Mexican American populations in Oxnard were involved in cultural struggles and negotiations long before Chand#225;vez led them in marches and active protests. Curious Unions explores the ways in which the Mexican community forged intriguing partnerships with other ethnic groups within Oxnard in the first half of the twentieth century and the resulting economic exchanges, cultural practices, and labor and community activism. Frank P. Barajas examines how the Oxnard ethnic Mexican population exercised its agency in alliance with other groups and organizations to meet their needs before large-scale protests and labor unions were engaged. Curious Unions charts how the cultural negotiations that took place in the Oxnard ethnic Mexican community helped shape and empower farm labor organizing.
About the Author
Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba is an associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity: From Sensuality to Bloodshed. Ignacio Corona is an associate professor of Literatures and Cultures of Latin America in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State University. He is co-editor of Postnational Musical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Scenario and The Contemporary Mexican Chronicle: Theoretical Perspectives on the Liminal Genre.