Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement (Hispanic Civil Rights)

Rating:
Summary: The long awaited book on Chicano history is finally here!
Review: Chicano!: The History of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement records with power the history of chicana/os in the U.S. from various vantage points: sociology, literature, anthropology, statistics, etc. This work textualizes the trauma experienced by Mexican American peoples attempting to assert an individual and collective identity in the land that was once theirs--Aztlan--and which continues to be so in spirit. The Chicana/o "experience," this book argues, is much more complex than the history that many have written, and goes beyond the hyphen; it is hybrid in many ways. The label "chicano" for example, goes beyond "Mexican-American." In Drink Cultura, Burciaga explains what this book argues throughout its pages: "Mexico never left the Southwest, it just learned English" (55)