From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in 20th Century America - Tapa dura

Mexican-Americans are now well established in the US, but it was an arduous century-long struggle - and the key participants in this effort have been the women. Whether living in a labour camp, a boxcar settlement, a mining town, or an urban barrio, Mexican women nurtured families, worked for wages, built extended networks (including fictional "uncles" and "aunts"), and participated in community associations - efforts which solidified the community and helped Mexican-Americans find their own place in America. In this text historian Vicki L. Ruiz provides a study of Mexican-American women in the 20th century, in a narrative enhanced by use of interviews and personal stories, capturing a vivid sense of the Mexicana experience in the United States. Ruiz begins with the first wave of Mexican women crossing the border from Mexico early in the 20th century. She reveals that between 1910 and 1930, over one million Mexican men and women (perhaps as much as ten percent of Mexico's population) migrated "al otro lado", joining the hundreds of thousands of Mexican-Americans already living in the Southwest United States. This book is intended for trade, women's studies and chicano history courses.

About the Author: Vicki L. Ruiz is Professor of History and Chicana-Chicano Studies at Arizona State University.