We Became Mexican American

We Became Mexican American PDF Author: Carlos B. Gil
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477136568
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
This is a story of Mexican family that arrived in America in the 1920s for the first time. And so, it is a tale of immigration, settlement and cultural adjustment, as well as generational progress. Carlos B. Gil, one of the American sons born to this family, places a magnifying glass on his ancestors who abandoned Mexico to arrive on the northern edge of Los Angeles, California. He narrates how his unprivileged relatives walked away from their homes in western Jalisco and northern Michoacán and traveled over several years to the U.S. border, crossing it at Nogales, Arizona, and then finally settling into the barrio of the city of San Fernando. Based on actual interviews, the author recounts how his parents met, married, and started a family on the eve of the Great Depression. With the aid of their testimonials, the author’s brothers and sisters help him tell of their growing up. They call to memory their father’s trials and tribulations as he tried to succeed in a new land, laboring as a common citrus worker, and how their mother helped shore him up as thousands of workers lost their jobs on account of the economic crash of 1929. Their story takes a look at how the family survived the Depression and a tragic accident, how they engaged in micro businesses as a survival tactic, and how the Gil children gradually became American, or Mexican American, as they entered young adulthood beginning in the 1940s. It also describes what life was like in their barrio. The author also comments briefly on the advancement of the second and third Gil generations and, in the Afterword, likewise offers a wide-ranging assessment of his family’s experience including observations about the challenges facing other Latinos today.

We Became Mexican American

We Became Mexican American PDF Author: Carlos B. Gil
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1477136568
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 444

Get Book

Book Description
This is a story of Mexican family that arrived in America in the 1920s for the first time. And so, it is a tale of immigration, settlement and cultural adjustment, as well as generational progress. Carlos B. Gil, one of the American sons born to this family, places a magnifying glass on his ancestors who abandoned Mexico to arrive on the northern edge of Los Angeles, California. He narrates how his unprivileged relatives walked away from their homes in western Jalisco and northern Michoacán and traveled over several years to the U.S. border, crossing it at Nogales, Arizona, and then finally settling into the barrio of the city of San Fernando. Based on actual interviews, the author recounts how his parents met, married, and started a family on the eve of the Great Depression. With the aid of their testimonials, the author’s brothers and sisters help him tell of their growing up. They call to memory their father’s trials and tribulations as he tried to succeed in a new land, laboring as a common citrus worker, and how their mother helped shore him up as thousands of workers lost their jobs on account of the economic crash of 1929. Their story takes a look at how the family survived the Depression and a tragic accident, how they engaged in micro businesses as a survival tactic, and how the Gil children gradually became American, or Mexican American, as they entered young adulthood beginning in the 1940s. It also describes what life was like in their barrio. The author also comments briefly on the advancement of the second and third Gil generations and, in the Afterword, likewise offers a wide-ranging assessment of his family’s experience including observations about the challenges facing other Latinos today.

Becoming Mexican American

Becoming Mexican American PDF Author: George J. Sanchez
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 9780195096484
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
Twentieth century Los Angeles has been the focus of one of the most profound and complex interactions between distinct cultures in U.S. history. In this pioneering study, Sanchez explores how Mexican immigrants "Americanized" themselves in order to fit in, thereby losing part of their own culture.

Mexican American Voices

Mexican American Voices PDF Author: Steven Mintz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405182601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This short, comprehensive collection of primary documents provides an indispensable introduction to Mexican American history and culture. Includes over 90 carefully chosen selections, with a succinct introduction and comprehensive headnotes that identify the major issues raised by the documents Emphasizes key themes in US history, from immigration and geographical expansion to urbanization, industrialization, and civil rights struggles Includes a 'visual history' chapter of images that supplement the documents, as well as an extensive bibliography

Mexican Americans

Mexican Americans PDF Author: Scott Ingram
Publisher: Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
ISBN: 9780836873160
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Describes why many Mexicans immigrated to the United States and how they adapted to their new environment.

Just Like Us

Just Like Us PDF Author: Helen Thorpe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416538984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
"Just Like Us" offers a powerful account of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver--two of whom have legal documentation, two of whom who don't--and the challenges they face as they attempt to pursue the American dream.

Manifest Destinies

Manifest Destinies PDF Author: Laura E. Gómez
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814732054
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Watch the Author Interview on KNME In both the historic record and the popular imagination, the story of nineteenth-century westward expansion in America has been characterized by notions of annexation rather than colonialism, of opening rather than conquering, and of settling unpopulated lands rather than displacing existing populations. Using the territory that is now New Mexico as a case study, Manifest Destinies traces the origins of Mexican Americans as a racial group in the United States, paying particular attention to shifting meanings of race and law in the nineteenth century. Laura E. Gómez explores the central paradox of Mexican American racial status as entailing the law's designation of Mexican Americans as &#;“white” and their simultaneous social position as non-white in American society. She tells a neglected story of conflict, conquest, cooperation, and competition among Mexicans, Indians, and Euro-Americans, the region’s three main populations who were the key architects and victims of the laws that dictated what one’s race was and how people would be treated by the law according to one’s race. Gómez’s path breaking work—spanning the disciplines of law, history, and sociology—reveals how the construction of Mexicans as an American racial group proved central to the larger process of restructuring the American racial order from the Mexican War (1846–48) to the early twentieth century. The emphasis on white-over-black relations during this period has obscured the significant role played by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny and the colonization of northern Mexico in the racial subordination of black Americans.

I'm Neither Here Nor There

I'm Neither Here Nor There PDF Author: Patricia Zavella
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822350351
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Crossings -- Migrations -- The working poor -- Migrant family formations -- The divided home -- Transnational cultural memory.

Decade of Betrayal

Decade of Betrayal PDF Author: Francisco E. Balderrama
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 0826339743
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 440

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Book Description
During the Great Depression, a sense of total despair plagued the United States. Americans sought a convenient scapegoat and found it in the Mexican community. Laws forbidding employment of Mexicans were accompanied by the hue and cry to "get rid of the Mexicans!" The hysteria led pandemic repatriation drives and one million Mexicans and their children were illegally shipped to Mexico. Despite their horrific treatment and traumatic experiences, the American born children never gave up hope of returning to the United States. Upon attaining legal age, they badgered their parents to let them return home. Repatriation survivors who came back worked diligently to get their lives back together. Due to their sense of shame, few of them ever told their children about their tragic ordeal. Decade of Betrayal recounts the injustice and suffering endured by the Mexican community during the 1930s. It focuses on the experiences of individuals forced to undergo the tragic ordeal of betrayal, deprivation, and adjustment. This revised edition also addresses the inclusion of the event in the educational curriculum, the issuance of a formal apology, and the question of fiscal remuneration. "Francisco Balderrama and Raymond Rodríguez, the authors of Decade of Betrayal, the first expansive study of Mexican repatriation with perspectives from both sides of the border, claim that 1 million people of Mexican descent were driven from the United States during the 1930s due to raids, scare tactics, deportation, repatriation and public pressure. Of that conservative estimate, approximately 60 percent of those leaving were legal American citizens. Mexicans comprised nearly half of all those deported during the decade, although they made up less than 1 percent of the country's population. 'Americans, reeling from the economic disorientation of the depression, sought a convenient scapegoat' Balderrama and Rodríguez wrote. 'They found it in the Mexican community.'"--American History

How Did You Get To Be Mexican

How Did You Get To Be Mexican PDF Author: Kevin Johnson
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 1592138187
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
A readable account of a life spent in the borderlands between racial identity.

Mexicans & Americans

Mexicans & Americans PDF Author: Ned Crouch
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
ISBN: 1417526831
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Understand why good neighbors are separated by the meaning of yes Whether negotiating a delivery date, launching a local franchise or renting a car in Mexico City, speaking the language and knowing the rules of business are not enough. In any culture where yes can mean no - or sometimes maybe - even giants like Wal-Mart and IBM can make costly mistakes. Mexicans and Americans gets to the heart of our differences and lays the groundwork for cultural fluency. Here is a humorous and insightful firthand look at how to succeed in working with Mexicans - on either side of the border. Steeped in the richness of Mexican culture and history, Ned Crouch helps us understand the most critical elements that determine what works and what doesn't when Mexicans and Americans come together in business: our different views of time and space, and our construction and use of language. He debunks the manana stereotype and offers specific advice on how to cross the cultural divide that separates us.