Rina Benmayor - Böcker

Migration and Identity is the third volume in the series International Yearbook of Oral Histories and Life Stories. Its theme is of special concern at a time both of massive worldwide migr ation and of apparently intensifying national, ethnic, and racial conflicts. The essays in this volume examine how the identities of migrants are shaped not only by gender, class, and ethnicity, but also by the experience of migration itself; and how migration is thus a crucible for both individual development and wider social change today. Guest-edited from the United States and with a special relevance to the Americas, this volume spans the whole complex global web of migratory patterns with contributions linking Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America, without losing the particularities of local and personal experience.The aim of the International Yearbook is to increase our understanding of the recent past and the changing present. It sets out to present and interpret autobiographical testimony, whether in the form of written autobiography, oral history, or life story interviews. Each issue forms a coherent volume focusing on a single theme. The two previous volumes are Memory and Totalitarianism (volume one, 1992; special editor Luisa Passerini) and Between Generations: Family Models, Myths, and Memories (volume two, 1993; special editors Daniel Bertaux and Paul Thompson).Edited by an international group of leading scholars, the Yearbook is genuinely interdisciplinary and intellectually stimulating. It will appeal to students in many areas, including history, sociology, literature, psychology, and anthropology.

Telling to Live embodies the vision that compelled Latina feminists to engage their differences and find common ground. Its contributors reflect varied class, religious, ethnic, racial, linguistic, sexual, and national backgrounds. Yet in one way or another they are all professional producers of testimonios-or life stories-whether as poets, oral historians, literary scholars, ethnographers, or psychologists. Through coalitional politics, these women have forged feminist political stances about generating knowledge through experience. Reclaiming testimonio as a tool for understanding the complexities of Latina identity, they compare how each made the journey to become credentialed creative thinkers and writers. Telling to Live unleashes the clarifying power of sharing these stories.The complex and rich tapestry of narratives that comprises this book introduces us to an intergenerational group of Latina women who negotiate their place in U.S. society at the cusp of the twenty-first century. These are the stories of women who struggled to reach the echelons of higher education, often against great odds, and constructed relationships of sustenance and creativity along the way. The stories, poetry, memoirs, and reflections of this diverse group of Puerto Rican, Chicana, Native American, Mexican, Cuban, Dominican, Sephardic, mixed-heritage, and Central American women provide new perspectives on feminist theorizing, perspectives located in the borderlands of Latino cultures.This often heart wrenching, sometimes playful, yet always insightful collection will interest those who wish to understand the challenges U.S. society poses for women of complex cultural heritages who strive to carve out their own spaces in the ivory tower.Contributors. Luz del Alba Acevedo, Norma AlarcÓn, Celia Alvarez, Ruth Behar, Rina Benmayor, Norma E. CantÚ, Daisy Cocco De Filippis, Gloria HolguÍn CuÁdraz, Liza Fiol-Matta, Yvette Flores-Ortiz, InÉs HernÁndez-Avila, Aurora Levins Morales, Clara Lomas, Iris Ofelia LÓpez, Mirtha N. Quintanales, Eliana Rivero, Caridad Souza, Patricia Zavella

Eleven essays, originally written in Spanish, Portuguese, and English, coalesce around major themes that have long concerned oral historians and social scientists: collective memories of conflictive national pasts, subjectivity in re/framing social identities, and visual and performative re/presentations of identity and public memory.

In 2015, both Portugal and Spain passed laws enabling descendants of Sephardi Jews to obtain citizenship, an historic offer of reconciliation. Drawing from scholarly and first-person essays, Reparative Citizenship for Sephardi Descendants analyzes the memory and afterlives of those who were wronged, and how reconciliatory rights impact the lives of those affected.