Synopses & Reviews
This powerful study shows how America's biggest export, rock and roll, became a major influence in Mexican politics, society, and culture. From the arrival of Elvis in Mexico during the 1950s to the emergence of a full-blown counterculture movement by the late 1960s, Eric Zolov uses rock and roll to illuminate Mexican history through these charged decades and into the 1970s. This fascinating narrative traces the rechanneling of youth energies away from political protest in the wake of the 1968 student movement and into counterculture rebellion, known as
La Onda (The Wave).
Refried Elvis accounts for the events of 1968 and their aftermath by revealing a mounting crisis of patriarchal values, linked both to the experience of modernization during the 1950s and 1960s and to the limits of cultural nationalism as promoted by a one-party state.
Through an engrossing analysis of music and film, as well as fanzines, newspapers, government documents, company reports, and numerous interviews, Zolov shows how rock music culture became a volatile commodity force, whose production and consumption strategies were shaped by intellectuals, state agencies, transnational and local capital, musicians, and fans alike. More than a history of Mexican rock and roll, Zolov's study demonstrates the politicized nature of culture under authoritarianism, and offers a nuanced discussion of the effects of cultural imperialism that deepens our understanding of gender relations, social hierarchies, and the very meanings of national identity in a transnational era.
Review
"Highly recommended."
Review
"Natalia Molinaand#8217;s examination of racial construction of Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans is notable and thorough . . . Terms are well defined, arguments are soundly presented, and commonly known historical events are explained."
Synopsis
Paisanos Chinos tracks Chinese Mexican transnational political activities in the wake of the anti-Chinese campaigns that crossed Mexico in 1931. Threatened by violence, Chinese Mexicans strengthened their ties to China--both Nationalist and Communist--as a means of safeguarding their presence. Paisanos Chinos illustrates the ways in which transpacific ties helped Chinese Mexicans make a claim to belonging in Mexico and challenge traditional notions of Mexican identity and nationhood. From celebrating the end of the Second World War alongside their neighbors to carrying out an annual community pilgrimage to the Basilica de Guadalupe, Chinese Mexicans came out of the shadows to refute longstanding caricatures and integrate themselves into Mexican society.
Synopsis
How Race Is Made in America examines Mexican Americansand#151;from 1924, when American law drastically reduced immigration into the United States, to 1965, when many quotas were abolishedand#151;to understand how broad themes of race and citizenship are constructed. These years shaped the emergence of what Natalia Molina describes as an
immigration regime, which defined the racial categories that continue to influence perceptions in the United States about Mexican Americans, race, and ethnicity.
Molina demonstrates that despite the multiplicity of influences that help shape our concept of race, common themes prevail. Examining legal, political, social, and cultural sources related to immigration, she advances the theory that our understanding of race is socially constructed in relational waysand#151;that is, in correspondence to other groups. Molina introduces and explains her central theory, racial scripts, which highlights the ways in which the lives of racialized groups are linked across time and space and thereby affect one another. How Race Is Made in America also shows that these racial scripts are easily adopted and adapted to apply to different racial groups.
Synopsis
"Molina provides a fresh, sophisticated analysis of the powerful racial 'scripts' generated in twentieth-century US political and legal culture, and of the Mexican population's unique vulnerability in the 1920s and after as eminently 'deportable.' This book's importance is sadly substantiated by twenty-first-century headlines about immigration policy, 'papers please' laws, and urban policing. A critical contribution." --Matthew Frye Jacobson, author of
Whiteness of a Different Color and
Barbarian Virtues
"Bridging Mexican American history and immigration history, How Race Is Made in America is a fascinating study of how deeply ingrained prejudices structure institutional and social power." --Monica Perales, author ofand#160;Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community
"A compelling, briskly written, deeply researched, and closely argued book that makes signal contributions on many fronts." --David Roediger, co-author of The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History
and#160;
About the Author
Natalia Molina is Associate Dean for Faculty Equity, Division of Arts and Humanities and Associate Professor of History and Urban Studies at the University of California, San Diego and author of
Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940 (UC Press, 2006)
and#160;
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part I. Immigration Regimes I: Mapping Race and Citizenship
Chapter One: Placing Mexican Immigration within the Larger Landscape of Race Relations in the U.S.
Chapter Two: and#147;What is a White Man?and#8221;: The Quest to Make Mexicans Ineligible for U.S. Citizenship
Chapter Three: Birthright Citizenship Beyond Black and White
Part II. Immigration Regimes II: Making Mexicans Deportable
Chapter Four: Mexicans Suspended in a State of Deportability: Medical Racialization and Immigration Policy in the 1940s
Chapter Five: Deportations in the Urban Landscape
Epilogue: Making Race in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Bibliography