Merced is as strong and determined as the huizache tree her father tried to chop down, but that kept growing back every year, even after he burned its roots. Her aunt marries her off to the most eligible man in their small Mexican town to protect her from her own father, who believes the girl’s developing body is his to use. In chapters spanning early twentieth century El Sauz, Mexico, mid-century El Paso and contemporary Los Angeles, this engrossing novel chronicles the harrowing yet darkly funny trials of three generations of resilient women. Merced is a young wife and mother in a loveless marriage when she meets the handsome but faithless Leandro in Ciudad Juarez. Her first taste of passion drives Merced to uproot her three daughters and embark on a daunting journey to the United States to reunite with her lover. Can her daughters and granddaughter break Leandro’s hold on Merced so they can finally put down their own roots? Or will they also have to break away and run? The women struggle with love, loss and survival against the expectations of patriarchal, misogynist societies on both sides of the border. This saga offers a spellbinding look at love conquered and lost, love freely given and purchased, working-class Mexican and Chicano communities and their love-hate relationship with American assimilation—all set to the popular music of both countries.

Merced is as strong and determined as the huizache tree her father tried to chop down, but that kept growing back every year, even after he burned its roots. Her aunt marries her off to the most eligible man in their small Mexican town to protect her from her own father, who believes the girl's developing body is his to use. In chapters spanning early twentieth century El Sauz, Mexico, mid-century El Paso and contemporary Los Angeles, this engrossing novel chronicles the harrowing yet darkly funny trials of three generations of resilient women. Merced is a young wife and mother in a loveless marriage when she meets the handsome but faithless Leandro in Ciudad Juárez. Her first taste of passion drives Merced to uproot her three daughters and embark on a daunting journey to the United States to reunite with her lover. Can her daughters and granddaughter break Leandro's hold on Merced so they can finally put down their own roots? Or will they also have to break away and run? The women struggle with love, loss and survival against the expectations of patriarchal, misogynist societies on both sides of the border. This saga offers a spellbinding look at love conquered and lost, love freely given and purchased, working-class Mexican and Chicano communities and their love-hate relationship with American assimilation--all set to the popular music of both countries.

A rich, long-term ethnography of women seafood traders in Mexico. The "shrimp ladies," locally known as changueras in southern Sinaloa, Mexico, sell seafood in open-air markets, forming an extralegal but key part of the economy built around this "pink gold.” Over time, they struggled to evolve from marginalized peddlers to local icons depicted in popular culture, even as they continue to work at an open-air street market. Pink Gold documents the shrimp traders' resilience and resourcefulness, from their early conflicts with the city, state, and federal authorities and forming a union, to carving out a physical space for a seafood market, and even engaging in conflicts with the Mexican military. Drawing from her two decades of fieldwork, María L. Cruz-Torres explores the inspiring narrative of this overlooked group of women involving grassroots politics, trans-border and familial networking, debt and informal economic practices, personal sacrifices, and simple courage. She argues that, amid intense economic competition, their success relies on group solidarity that creates interlocking networks of mutual trust, or confianza, that in turn enable them to cross social and political boundaries that would typically be closed to them. Ultimately, Pink Gold offers fresh insights into issues of gender and labor, urban public space, the street economy, commodities, and globalization.

In the title story of this collection, Isabela is minding her family’s restaurant, drinking her dad’s beer, when Frida Kahlo and the Virgen de Guadalupe walk in. Even though they’re dressed like cholas, the girl immediately recognizes Frida’s uni-brow and La Virgen’s crown. They want to give her advice about the quinceanera her parents are forcing on her. In fact, their lecture (don’t get pregnant, go to school, be proud of your indigenous roots) helps Isabela to escape her parents’ physical and sexual abuse. But can she really run away from the self-hatred they’ve created? These inter-related stories, mostly set in East Los Angeles, uncover the lives of a conflicted Mexican-American community. In “Sabado Gigante,” Bernardo drinks himself into a stupor every Saturday night. “Aqui no es mi tierra,” he cries, as he tries to ease the sorrow of a life lived far from home. Meanwhile, his son Gustavo struggles with his emerging gay identity and Maritza, the oldest daughter, is expected to cook and clean for her brother, even though they live in East LA, not Guadalajara or Chihuahua. In “Powder Puff,” Mireya spends hours every day applying her make-up, making sure to rub the foundation all the way down her neck so it looks like her natural color. But no matter how much she rubs and rubs, her skin is no lighter. Estella Gonzalez vividly captures her native East LA in these affecting stories about a marginalized people dealing with racism, machismo and poverty. In painful and sometimes humorous scenes, young people try to escape the traditional expectations of their family. Other characters struggle with anger and resentment, often finding innovative ways to exact revenge for slights both real and imagined. Throughout, music—traditional and contemporary—accompanies them in the search for love and acceptance.

The aim of this book is to engender Mexican folk art and locate women at its centre by studying the processes of creation, distribution, and consumption, as well as examining iconographic aspects, and elements of class and ethnicity, from the perspective of gender. The author will demonstrate that the topic provides unique insights into Mexican culture, and has enormous relevance within and without the country, given the fact that much folk art is made for the United States and Europe, either in terms of the tourists who buy it on coming to Mexico, or that which is exported.

This is the first major collection to remap the American West though the intersectional lens of gender and sexuality, especially in relation to race and Indigeneity. Organized through several interrelated key concepts, The Routledge Companion to Gender and the American West addresses gender and sexuality from and across diverse and divergent methodologies. Comprising 34 chapters by a team of international contributors, the Companion is divided into four parts: Genealogies Bodies Movements Lands The volume features leading and newer scholars whose essays connect interdisciplinary fields including Indigenous Studies, Latinx and Asian American Studies, Western American Studies, and Queer, Feminist, and Gender Studies. Through innovative methodologies and reclaimed archives of knowledge, contributors model fresh frameworks for thinking about relations of power and place, gender and genre, settler colonization and decolonial resistance. Even as they reckon with the ongoing gendered and racialized violence at the core of the American West, contributors forge new lexicons for imagining alternative Western futures. This pathbreaking collection will be invaluable to scholars and students studying the origins, myths, histories, and legacies of the American West. This is a foundational collection that will become invaluable to scholars and students across a range of disciplines including Gender and Sexuality Studies, Literary Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Latinx Studies.

A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and GOODREADS • A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street. It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.