Written by a Mexican-American woman and her coauthor during the 1930s and 1940s, Caballero remained unprinted and unavailable to the public for over 50 years. The novel examines the impact of the 1846-48 war with Mexico on a tejano family and particularly on Mexican women. Paper edition (unseen), $19.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
First published in 1931, this is the complete history of Santa Fe, New Mexico written by Santa Fe native, Ruth Laughlin. Drawing on her extensive research and thorough personal understanding, the author covers all aspects of Spanish-American traditions, customs, and culture. She captures the elusive quality which makes the atmosphere of the city so appealing and writes with fluent ease of the history of the Southwest from the days of the Conquistadores. She covers every aspect of the life of the region including the political situation of the time with its Japanese Detention Camp, its art, its crafts, its architecture, and of the land and its climate.
This riveting exposé reveals how a distorted belief in Anglo superiority necessitated the rewriting of American western history, replacing heroic images of Mexican and Spanish cowboys with negative stereotypes. Early Anglo settlers in the Old West crafted negative images of Latinos in part to help justify the takeover of land occupied by Mexicans and Spaniards at the time. Unfortunately, these depictions were perpetuated throughout the 20th century in art, popular culture, and media ... eventually reshaping the narrative of the American West to the exclusion of the non-Anglo people. This book contrasts dominant lore with historical reality to provide a broad overview of the history and contributions of Latinos in the Old West. Author D. H. Figueredo sets out to debunk the myths and falsehoods of the American West by chronicling the cultural perceptions that led to such historical inaccuracies. Through spellbinding accounts, chapters address such topics as the legends behind the caballeros, Mexican culture in the Old West, and the search for cities of gold in the Southwest. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book examines how popular culture diminished the role of the Mexican vaqueros and illustrates how the image of the Anglo cowboy became the iconic symbol of the Old West.
Don Miguel Caballero, a successful labor contractor in Texas' Rio Grande Valley and later, in California's Salinas Valley, enjoys the good life: prosperity, the respect of his community, a marriage of thirty years, six bright children. But gradually all he has worked for begins to unravel. Three of his daughters give their versions of the disintegration of an idyllic way of life. Called a "heart-wrenchingly good tale" and "a fascinating look at a culture and way of life," The Caballeros of Ruby, Texas was a WILLA Literary Award finalist in 2003 for Original Softcover Fiction.
New Spiritual Homes investigates how the religious traditions, movements, and institutions have been vital for Asian Americans, past and present. Through essays, expressive works, and resource materials, it reframes the religious landscape and brings into view the experiences of Asian Americans. The essay covers an impressive range of topics, including Chinese American Protestant nationalism, the development of Filipino American folk religion, law, and religion among American Sikhs.
From the day he was born, Federico Jiménez Caballero was predicted to be a successful man. So, how exactly did a young boy from Tututepec, Oaxaca, become a famous Indigenous jewelry artist and philanthropist in Los Angeles? Federico tells the remarkable story of willpower, curiosity, hard work, and passion coming together to change one man’s life forever. As a child growing up in a small rural town in southern Mexico, Federico Jiménez Caballero faced challenges that most of us cannot imagine, let alone overcome. From a young age, Federico worked tirelessly to contribute to his large family, yet his restless spirit often got him into trouble. Finding himself in the middle of a village-wide catastrophe, he was exiled to a boarding school in Oaxaca City where he was forced to become independent, resilient, and razor-sharp in order to stay afloat. Through his incredible people skills, bravery, and a few nudges from his bold mother, Federico found himself excelling in his studies and climbing the ranks in Oaxaca City. He always held a deep love and respect for his Mixtec Indigenous roots and began to collect Indigenous jewelry and textiles. Through a series of well-timed connections, Federico met his wife Ellen, and, shortly afterward, he came to the United States as a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the late 1960s. Carrying his passion for Indigenous jewelry with him from Oaxaca, Federico owned a series of shops in Los Angeles and sold jewelry at flea markets to well-known Hollywood stars. Over the years, he cultivated relationships and became a philanthropist as well as the owner of a museum in Oaxaca City. This book is the inspiring first-person account of eighty years in the life of a man who moved from humble beginnings to the bright lights of Hollywood, following his passion and creating long-lasting relationships as he climbed the ladder of success.
In this collection, Caballero imagines how memory frames and reshapes the present, how memory illuminates and limits the stories of ourselves, and how, despite the passage of time, primal moments in the past are the ghosts and echoes of our present. These poems interweave an early childhood lived in another country and in another language with experiences of immigration and family histories in the United States. They create connections between a child's naïve perspective of dictatorship and an adult perspective informed by bodily illness and political knowledge. Ultimately, Caballero traces a lineage of memory, exploring how present moments unearth the past that ripples through them. This collection does not reconcile the past and the present. Instead, these poems remind us that how we ask questions about ourselves, our histories, and our bodies is what creates our identities, our traumas, and our future hopes and possibilities. Caballero bears unflinching witness to the emotional trauma inherited from war-ravaged Chile to the exiled plains of Oklahoma. As though to witness is to love. These poems negotiate the transitions of language, memory, country, her battle with cancer, counterbalancing the violence from which she fled with a transformative devotion to details.--Richard Blanco, fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet
