Rewriting the Chicano Movement

New Histories of Mexican American Activism in the Civil Rights Era

Edited by Mario T. Garcia and Ellen McCracken

The University of Arizona Press

The Chicano Movement, el movimiento, is known as the largest and most expansive civil rights and empowerment movement by Mexican Americans up to that time. It made Chicanos into major American political actors and laid the foundation for today’s Latino political power. Rewriting the Chicano Movement is a collection of powerful new essays on the Chicano Movement that expand and revise our understanding of the movement. These essays capture the commitment, courage, and perseverance of movement activists, both men and women, and their struggles to achieve the promises of American democracy.

The essays in this volume broaden traditional views of the Chicano Movement that are too narrow and monolithic. Instead, the contributors to this book highlight the role of women in the movement, the regional and ideological diversification of the movement, and the various cultural fronts in which the movement was active. Rewriting the Chicano Movement stresses that there was no single Chicano Movement but instead a composite of movements committed to the same goal of Chicano self-determination. Scholars, students, and community activists interested in the history of the Chicano Movement can best start by reading this book.

Contributors: Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Tim Drescher, Jesús Jesse Esparza, Patrick Fontes, Mario T. García, Tiffany Jasmín González, Ellen McCracken, Juan Pablo Mercado, Andrea Muñoz, Michael Anthony Turcios, Omar Valerio-Jiménez

Reviews
Editors

Conversation about the Chicano Movement is far from over—in fact, it is continuing and getting reenergized all the time. Here, veteran and rising scholars across a variety of disciplines give us fascinating, multi-sited snapshots of this political moment in American history. I found myself learning so many new things about the ways that Mexican American women, men, and children spearheaded struggles for their equal rights and treatment across the Southwest.’—Lori A. Flores, author of Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement

Mario T. Garcia is Distinguished Professor of Chicano Studies and History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of more than twenty books on Chicano history, most recently The Making of a Mexican American Mayor: Raymond L. Telles of El Paso and the Origins of Latino Political Power and Father Luis Olivares—A Biography: Faith Politics and the Origins of the Sanctuary Movement in Los Angeles. He is a Guggenheim Fellow.

Ellen McCracken is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at University of California, Santa Barbara, specializing in U.S. Latino and Latin American literature. Her books include New Latina Narrative, The Life and Writing of Fray Angélico Chávez, and Paratexts and Performance in the Novels of Junot Díaz and Sandra Cisneros.

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