This book brings together the most influential and widely known writings of Vicki L. Ruiz, a leading voice in the fields of Chicana/o, Latina/o, women’s, and labor history. For nearly forty years, Ruiz has produced scholarship that has provided the foundation for a rich and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Chicanas and Latinas negotiate the structures impinging on their everyday lives. From challenging familial, patriarchal cultural norms, building interethnic social networks in the neighborhood and workplace, and organizing labor unions, to fighting gender and racial discrimination in the courts, at work, in the schools, and on the streets, Ruiz’s studies have examined the countless struggles, roadblocks, and victories Chicanas and Latinas have faced in the twentieth century and beyond. The articles in this book are organized chronologically to reflect the evolution of Ruiz’s intellectual contributions as well as her commitment to integrating feminist history, theory, and methodology, and show how she has generously offered insights, reflections, and humor in helping us define and shape who we are as mujeres, Chicanas, Latinas, scholars, teachers, and mentors. With its narrative flow and engaging prose, Ruiz’s scholarship connects with academic and public audiences and this collection fulfills a much-needed demand in the teaching of women’s, Chicana/o, Latina/o, and labor history.

This book brings together the most influential and widely known writings of Vicki L. Ruiz, a leading voice in the fields of Chicana/o, Latina/o, women's, and labor history. For nearly forty years, Ruiz has produced scholarship that has provided the foundation for a rich and nuanced understanding of the ways in which Chicanas and Latinas negotiate the structures impinging on their everyday lives. From challenging familial, patriarchal cultural norms, building interethnic social networks in the neighborhood and workplace, organizing labor unions, to fighting gender and racial discrimination in the courts, at work, the schools, and the streets, Ruiz's studies have examined the countless struggles, roadblocks, and victories Chicanas and Latinas have faced in the twentieth century and beyond. The articles in this book are organized chronologically to reflect the evolution of Ruiz's intellectual contributions as well as her commitment to integrating feminist history, theory, and methodology, and show how she has generously offered insights, reflections, and humor in helping us define and shape who we are as mujeres, Chicanas, Latinas, scholars, teachers, and mentors. With its narrative flow and engaging prose, Ruiz's scholarship connects with academic and public audiences and this collection fulfills a much-needed demand in the teaching of women's, Chicana/o, Latina/o, and labor history.

Transnational Latina Narratives is the first critical study of its kind to examine twenty-first-century Latina narratives by female authors of diverse Latin American heritages based in the U.S. Heredia s comparative perspective on gender, race and migrations between Latin America and the U.S. demonstrates the changing national landscape that needs to accommodate an ever-growing Latino/a presence. This book draws on the work of Denise Chávez, Sandra Cisneros, Marta Moreno Vega, Angie Cruz, and Marie Arana, as well as a diverse blend of popular culture. Heredia s thought-provoking insights seek to empower the representation of women who are transnational ambassadors in modern trans-American literature.

Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios—or life stories—whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories. The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures. This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower. Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma Alarcón, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. Cantú, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria Holguín Cuádraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, Inés Hernández-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia López, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

In this new study, Ylce Irizarry moves beyond literature that prioritizes assimilation to examine how contemporary fiction depicts being Cuban, Dominican, Mexican, or Puerto Rican within Chicana/o and Latina/o America. Irizarry establishes four dominant categories of narrative--loss, reclamation, fracture, and new memory--that address immigration, gender and sexuality, cultural nationalisms, and neocolonialism. As she shows, narrative concerns have moved away from the weathered notions of arrival and assimilation. Contemporary Chicana/o and Latina/o literatures instead tell stories that have little, if anything, to do with integration into the Anglo-American world. The result is the creation of new memory. This reformulation of cultural membership unmasks the neocolonial story and charts the conscious engagement of cultural memory. It outlines the ways contemporary Chicana/o and Latina/o communities create belonging and memory of their ethnic origins. An engaging contribution to an important literary tradition, Chicana/o and Latina/o Fiction privileges the stories Chicanas/os and Latinas/os remember about themselves rather than the stories of those subjugating them.

Stereotypes of Mexican American women and the lack of their representation in research literature contribute to misrepresentations of Mexican American culture and their invisibility. In this qualitative study, Mexican American women were interviewed and their life histories were examined using an ethnographic and hermeneutical phenomenological approach.

Milwaukee's small but vibrant Mexican and Mexican American community of the 1920s grew over succeeding decades to incorporate Mexican, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central American, and Caribbean migration to the city. Drawing on years of interviews and collaboration with interviewees, Theresa Delgadillo offers a set of narratives that explore the fascinating family, community, work, and career experiences of Milwaukee's Latinas during this time of transformation. Through the stories of these women, Delgadillo caringly provides access to a wide variety of Latina experiences: early Mexican settlers entering careers as secretaries and entrepreneurs; Salvadoran and Puerto Rican women who sought educational opportunity in the U.S., sometimes in flight from political conflicts; Mexican women becoming leather workers and drill press operators; and second-generation Latinas entering the professional classes. These women show how members of diverse generations, ethnicities, and occupations embraced interethnic collaboration and coalition but also negotiated ethnic and racial discrimination, domestic violence, workplace hostilities, and family separations. A one-of-a-kind collection, Latina Lives in Milwaukee sheds light on the journeys undertaken then and now by Latinas in the region, and lays the foundation for the further study of the Latina experience in the Midwest. With contributions from Ramona Arsiniega, María Monreal Cameron, Daisy Cubías, Elvira Sandoval Denk, Rosemary Sandoval Le Moine, Antonia Morales, Carmen Murguia, Gloria Sandoval Rozman, Margarita Sandoval Skare, Olga Valcourt Schwartz, and Olivia Villarreal.