Author: Camille Guerin-Gonzales
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813520483
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Earlier in this century, over one million Mexican immigrants moved to the United States, attracted by the prospect of work in California's fields. The Mexican farmworkers were tolerated by Americans as long as there was enough work to go around. During the Great Depression, though, white Americans demanded that Mexican workers and their families return to Mexico. In the 1930s, the federal government and county relief agencies forced the repatriation of half a million Mexicans--and some Mexican Americans as well. Camille Guerin-Gonzales tells the story of their migration, their years here, and of the repatriation program--one of the largest mass removal operations ever sanctioned by the U.S. government. She exposes the powers arrayed against Mexicans as well as the patterns of Mexican resistance, and she maps out constructions of national and ethnic identity across the contested terrain of the American Dream.
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.
Author: Marilyn P. Davis
Publisher: Owl Books
ISBN: 9780805018592
Category : Immigrants
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
In these vivid recollections, recorded both in Mexico and the U.S., 90 Mexican-Americans share their innermost thoughts and feelings and reveal a wealth of experiences: the risks they take, what they left behind, their dreams versus the realities, and how immigration has changed their lives.
Author: John Mason Hart
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 0585256179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
The history of Mexican and Mexican-American working classes has been segregated by the political boundary that separates the United States of America from the United States of Mexico. As a result, scholars have long ignored the social, cultural, and political threads that the two groups hold in common. Further, they have seldom addressed the impact of American values and organizations on the working class of that country. Compiled by one of the leading North American experts on the Mexican Revolution, the essays in Border Crossings: Mexican and Mexican-American Workers explore the historical process behind the formation of the Mexican and Mexican- American working classes. The volume connects the history of their experiences from the cultural beginnings and the rise of industrialism in Mexico to the late twentieth century in the U.S. Border Crossings notes the similar social experiences and strategies of Mexican workers in both countries, community formation and community organizations, their mutual aid efforts, the movements of people between Mexico and Mexican-American communities, the roles of women, and the formation of political groups. Finally, Border Crossings addresses the special conditions of Mexicans in the United States, including the creation of a Mexican-American middle class, the impact of American racism on Mexican communities, and the nature and evolution of border towns and the borderlands.
Author: Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
Publisher: One World
ISBN: 0399592709
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation. “Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own. Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
Author: Zaragosa Vargas
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400849284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era. Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation. The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights. He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.
Author: Julissa Arce
Publisher: Center Street
ISBN: 1455540250
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
A National Bestseller! What does an undocumented immigrant look like? What kind of family must she come from? How could she get into this country? What is the true price she must pay to remain in the United States? JULISSA ARCE knows firsthand that the most common, preconceived answers to those questions are sometimes far too simple-and often just plain wrong. On the surface, Arce's story reads like a how-to manual for achieving the American dream: growing up in an apartment on the outskirts of San Antonio, she worked tirelessly, achieved academic excellence, and landed a coveted job on Wall Street, complete with a six-figure salary. The level of professional and financial success that she achieved was the very definition of the American dream. But in this brave new memoir, Arce digs deep to reveal the physical, financial, and emotional costs of the stunning secret that she, like many other high-achieving, successful individuals in the United States, had been forced to keep not only from her bosses, but even from her closest friends. From the time she was brought to this country by her hardworking parents as a child, Arce-the scholarship winner, the honors college graduate, the young woman who climbed the ladder to become a vice president at Goldman Sachs-had secretly lived as an undocumented immigrant. In this surprising, at times heart-wrenching, but always inspirational personal story of struggle, grief, and ultimate redemption, Arce takes readers deep into the little-understood world of a generation of undocumented immigrants in the United States today- people who live next door, sit in your classrooms, work in the same office, and may very well be your boss. By opening up about the story of her successes, her heartbreaks, and her long-fought journey to emerge from the shadows and become an American citizen, Arce shows us the true cost of achieving the American dream-from the perspective of a woman who had to scale unseen and unimaginable walls to get there.
Author: William Perez
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000971341
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Winner of the CEP Mildred Garcia Award for Exemplary ScholarshipAbout 2.4 million children and young adults under 24 years of age are undocumented. Brought by their parents to the US as minors—many before they had reached their teens—they account for about one-sixth of the total undocumented population. Illegal through no fault of their own, some 65,000 undocumented students graduate from the nation's high schools each year. They cannot get a legal job, and face enormous barriers trying to enter college to better themselves—and yet America is the only country they know and, for many, English is the only language they speak. What future do they have? Why are we not capitalizing, as a nation, on this pool of talent that has so much to contribute? What should we be doing?Through the inspiring stories of 16 students—from seniors in high school to graduate students—William Perez gives voice to the estimated 2.4 million undocumented students in the United States, and draws attention to their plight. These stories reveal how—despite financial hardship, the unpredictability of living with the daily threat of deportation, restrictions of all sorts, and often in the face of discrimination by their teachers—so many are not just persisting in the American educational system, but achieving academically, and moreover often participating in service to their local communities. Perez reveals what drives these young people, and the visions they have for contributing to the country they call home.Through these stories, this book draws attention to these students’ predicament, to stimulate the debate about putting right a wrong not of their making, and to motivate more people to call for legislation, like the stalled Dream Act, that would offer undocumented students who participate in the economy and civil life a path to citizenship. Perez goes beyond this to discuss the social and policy issues of immigration reform. He dispels myths about illegal immigrants’ supposed drain on state and federal resources, providing authoritative evidence to the contrary. He cogently makes the case—on economic, social, and constitutional and moral grounds—for more flexible policies towards undocumented immigrants. If today’s immigrants, like those of past generations, are a positive force for our society, how much truer is that where undocumented students are concerned?
Author: Juan Felipe Herrera
Publisher: Children's Book Press
ISBN: 9780892391660
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44
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Book Description
This bilingual memoir by a celebrated poet paints a vivid picture of his migrant farmworker childhood. Full-color illustrations.
Author: Alfredo Corchado
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1632865564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
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Book Description
From prizewinning journalist and immigration expert Alfredo Corchado comes the sweeping story of the great Mexican migration from the late 1980s to today. Homelands is the story of Mexican immigration to the United States over the last three decades. Written by Alfredo Corchado, one of the most prominent Mexican American journalists, it's told from the perspective of four friends who first meet in a Mexican restaurant in Philadelphia in 1987. One was a radical activist, another a restaurant/tequila entrepreneur, the third a lawyer/politician, and the fourth, Alfredo, a hungry young reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Over the course of thirty years, the four friends continued to meet, coming together to share stories of the turning points in their lives-the death of parents, the births of children, professional milestones, stories from their families north and south of the border. Using the lens of this intimate narrative of friendship, the book chronicles one of modern America's most profound transformations-during which Mexican Americans swelled to become our largest single minority, changing the color, economy, and culture of America itself. In 1970, the Mexican population was just 700,000 people, but despite the recent decline in Mexican immigration to the United States, the Mexican American population has now passed three million-a result of high birth rates here in the United States. In the wake of the nativist sentiment unleased in the recent election, Homelands will be a must-read for policy makers, activists, Mexican Americas, and all those wishing to truly understand the background of our ongoing immigration debate.
