Patricia Hart - Böcker

Gender on the Borderlands captures the intense, complex, and gendered experience of those living along the barbwire borderlands of Mexico and the United States. Through scholarship, testimonials, oral histories, songs, poetry, and art, the contributors reclaim the borderlands from the distortions and violence of "official" history and continue the recovery of a gendered Chicana/Chicano history begun by Gloria Anzaldúa in Borderlands/La Frontera more than twenty years ago.  Both noted and new scholars reweave the fabric of collective, family, and individual history with a legacy of agency and activism in the borderlands in these twenty-one original selections. Contributors explore themes of homeland, sexuality, language, violence, colonialism, and political resistance within the most recent frameworks of Chicana/Chicano inquiry. Art as social critique, culture as a human right, labor activism, racial plurality, Indigenous knowledge, and strategies of decolonization all vitalize these selections edited by one of the country's most respected historians of the borderlands, Antonia Castañeda. From Aztec cosmology to globalization, Gender on the Borderlands unites the past with the present and the future to reclaim and transform the gendered, transnational domain along the Mexico-U.S. border.

Chicana Leadership: The "Frontiers" Reader breaks the stereotypes of Mexican American women and shows how these women shape their lives and communities. This collection looks beyond the frequently held perception of Chicanas as passive and submissive and instead examines their roles as dynamic community leaders, activists, and scholars. Chicana Leadership features fifteen essays from the notable women's journal Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies that demonstrate the strength and diversity of Chicanas as well as their continuing struggle to have their voices heard. Noted scholars discuss issues ranging from the feminist prototype La Malinche to Chicana writers and national ideology, from gender and identity to ideas of culture and romance, and from tokenism to the diversity within the Chicana community. The essays provide an introduction to an evolving understanding of this diverse community of women and how they interact among themselves, with their community, and with the world around them.