New Chicano(a) Focused Non-Fiction in Feb. 2011

 New Chicano Focused Non-Fiction in Feb. 2011

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Tejanos in Gray: Civil War Letters of Captains Joseph Rafael de la Garza and Manuel Yturri

(Fronteras Series, sponsored by Texas A and M International University) - Hardcover

TAMU Press February 27, 2011

ISBN-10: 160344243X ISBN-13: 978-1603442435

Dr. Jerry Thompson Ph.D. (Editor), José Roberto Juárez Ph.D. (Translator)

Mexican Texans, fighting for the Confederate cause, in their own words . . .  The Civil War is often conceived in simplistic, black and white terms: whites from the North and South fighting over states’ rights, usually centered on the issue of black slavery. But, as Jerry Thompson shows in Tejanos in Gray, motivations for allegiance to the South were often more complex than traditional interpretations have indicated.

Gathered for the first time in this book, the forty-one letters and letter fragments written by two Mexican Texans, Captains Manuel Yturri and Joseph Rafael de la Garza, reveal the intricate and intertwined relationships that characterized the lives of Texan citizens of Mexican descent in the years leading up to and including the Civil War. 

The experiences and impressions reflected in the letters of these two young members of the Tejano elite from San Antonio, related by marriage, provide fascinating glimpses of a Texas that had displaced many Mexican-descent families after the Revolution, yet could still inspire their loyalty to the Confederate flag. De la Garza, in fact, would go on to give his life for the Southern cause.

The letters, translated by José Roberto Juárez and with meticulous annotation and commentary by Thompson, deepen and provide nuance to our understanding of the Civil War and its combatants, especially with regard to the Tejano experience. 

Historians, students, and general readers interested in the Civil War will appreciate Tejanos in Gray for its substantial contribution to borderlands studies, military history, and the often-overlooked interplay of region, ethnicity, and class in the Texas of the mid-nineteenth century.

Mexican American Baseball in Los Angeles

(Images of Baseball)

Paperback - Arcadia Publishing February 21, 2011

ISBN-10: 0738581801

ISBN-13: 978-0738581804

Francisco E. Balderrama (Author), Richard A. Santillan (Author)

Images of Baseball: Mexican American Baseball in Los Angeles celebrates the flourishing culture of the great pastime in East Los Angeles and other communities where a strong sense of Mexican identity and pride was fostered in a sporting atmosphere of both fierce athleticism and social celebration. 

From 1900, with the establishment of the Mexican immigrant community, to the rise of Fernandomania in the 1980s, baseball diamonds in greater Los Angeles were both proving grounds for youth as they entered their educations and careers, and the foundation for the talented Forty-Sixty Club, comprised of players of at least 40, and often over 60, years of age. 

These evocative photographs look back on the great Mexican American teams and players of the 20th century, including the famous Chorizeros--the proclaimed "Yankees of East L.A."

Mexican Americans in Wilmington

(Images of America Series) Paperback

Arcadia Publishing February 21, 2011

ISBN-10: 0738581747

ISBN-13: 978-0738581743

Olivia Cueva-Fernandez

Under Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. flags, the Los Angeles harbor area has developed many industries and businesses that survived on Mexican labor, supporting families of Mexican origin for more than a century.

Pioneering Mexican Americans have worked the railroads, fields, canneries, plants, refineries, waterfront, and family-owned businesses for generations, forming strong bonds and lifelong friendships.

Active in the military and sports, as well as involved in the church and community, Mexican Americans have overcome poverty, hardships, and discrimination, retained cultural values and customs, intermarried and assimilated with other cultures, and become the largest ethnic group in Wilmington.

Many of the early families still have relatives that live and work in Wilmington, with sons and daughters achieving successful careers in various realms.

Through education, hard work, and determination, Wilmington's Mexican Americans have contributed extensively to the harbor's vibrant American way of life.

Marching Students: Chicana and Chicano Activism in Education, 1968 to the Present  

Paperback - University of Nevada Press February 1, 2011

ISBN-10: 087417841X

ISBN-13: 978-0874178418

Margarita Berta-Avila (Author), Anita Tijerina Revilla (Editor), Julie Lopez Figueroa (Editor)

In 1968 over 10,000 Chicana/o high school students in East Los Angeles walked out of their schools in the first major protest against racism and educational inequality staged by Mexican Americans in the United States. 

They ignited the Mexican-American civil rights movement, which opened the doors to higher education and equal opportunity in employment for Mexican Americans and other Latinos previously excluded. 

Marching Students is a collaborative effort by Chicana/o scholars in several fields to place the 1968 walkouts and Chicana and Chicano Civil Rights Movement in historical context, highlighting the contribution of Chicana/o educators, students, and community activists to minority education. 

El Paso and The Mexican Revolution

Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 9780738584652
On Sale Date: 11/08/2010

Patricia Haesly Worthington

The Mexican Revolution took place along the entire length of the border between the United States and Mexico. Most of the intense battles and revolutionary intrigue, however, were concentrated in the border region of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. For 20 years, the U.S. and Mexico border communities dealt with revolution, beginning before the 1909 Taft-Díaz visit and ending with the Escobar Revolution of 1929. In between were battles, assassinations, invasions, and attempts at diplomacy. El Paso was center stage for many of these events. Newspapers and media from all over the country flocked to the border and produced numerous stories, photographs, and colorful renditions of the Mexican Revolution. The facts and myths have been kept alive over the last 100 years, and the revolution remains an important topic of discussion today.

Early Maricopa County: 1871-1920
Jeremy Rowe
Arcadia Publishing ISBN: 9780738574165
On Sale Date: 01/24/2011

In 1863, the first mining town, Wickenburg, was established in what would become Maricopa County, when it was created from parts of Pima, Yuma, Mohave, and Yavapai counties on February 12, 1871. 

Spanish Franciscan missionary Francisco Garces claimed the name "Maricopa" came from the Pima word for the Pipatsje, a Yuman tribe from the Gulf of California that migrated to Arizona's central valley long ago. 

Ten years after Maricopa County was established, Jack Swillings's original settlement had begun its evolution into the ever-expanding city of Phoenix. By the turn of the 20th century, Maricopa County was no longer just a dusty settlement for a few hundred sturdy souls. 

Its rich agricultural districts had grown in scope and breadth, since its irrigation systems were fed by the Salt and Verde Rivers impounded in Roosevelt, Apache, and Canyon Lakes. Phoenix led the explosive growth of Maricopa County and Arizona, and by 1920 had become a dynamic, vibrant state capital. Today Maricopa County is the state's major economic engine and home to the fifth largest city in America.