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Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America
Author: Gustavo Arellano
ISBN-10: 1439148619
ISBN-13: 9781439148617
Published: 2012-04-10
Publisher: Scribner
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Book Description:
The nationally syndicated columnist and bestselling author of ¡Ask a Mexican! presents an entertaining, tasty trip through the history and culture of Mexican food, uncovering great stories and charting the cuisine’s tremendous popularity in America.In the tradition of Bill Buford (Heat) and Calvin Trillin (The Tummy Trilogy), Gustavo Arellano satisfies readers with a fascinating narrative that combines history, cultural criticism, personal anecdotes, and an overwhelming passion for cooking and eating. When salsa overtook ketchup as this country’s favorite condiment in the 1990s, America’s century-long love affair with Mexican food reached a plateau that it continues to beat every year. Mexican foodstuffs dominate American palates to the tune of billions of dollars in sales per year. Now, Taco USA addresses the all-important questions: What exactly constitutes “Mexican” food in the United States? What’s “authentic,” and what’s “Taco Bell”? What’s so cosmic about a burrito? And why do Americans love Mexican food so darn much? With insight and humor, Arellano looks at the history and politics of all aspects of Mexican food in the United States, from tater tot burritos in South Dakota to long-forgotten pioneers, and investigates the origins and history of these trends, interspersed throughout with personal anecdotes, social commentary, and, of course, vivid descriptions of delicious food.
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Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.a.
Author: Luis J. Rodriguez
ISBN-10: 1439566283
ISBN-13: 9781439566282
Published: 2009-04-09
Publisher: Paw Prints
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Book Description:
The award-winning and bestselling classic memoir about a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles, now featuring a new cover. Winner of the Carl Sandburg Literary Award, hailed as a New York Times notable book, and read by hundreds of thousands, Always Running is the searing true story of one man’s life in a Chicano gang—and his heroic struggle to free himself from its grip. By age twelve, Luis Rodriguez was a veteran of East Los Angeles gang warfare. Lured by a seemingly invincible gang culture, he witnessed countless shootings, beatings, and arrests and then watched with increasing fear as gang life claimed friends and family members. Before long, Rodriguez saw a way out of the barrio through education and the power of words and successfully broke free from years of violence and desperation. Achieving success as an award-winning poet, he was sure the streets would haunt him no more—until his young son joined a gang. Rodriguez fought for his child by telling his own story in Always Running, a vivid memoir that explores the motivations of gang life and cautions against the death and destruction that inevitably claim its participants. At times heartbreakingly sad and brutal, Always Running is ultimately an uplifting true story, filled with hope, insight, and a hard-earned lesson for the next generation.
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Rain of Gold
Author: Victor Villasenor
ISBN-10: 1558850309
ISBN-13: 9781558850309
Published: 1991-10-31
Publisher: Arte Publico Press
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Book Description:
This is the Hispanic Roots, an all-American story of poverty, immigration, struggle and success. It focuses on three generations of Villaseñor's kin, their spiritual and cultural roots in Mexico, their immigration to California and their overcoming the poverty, prejudice and economic exploitation. It is the warm-hearted, humorous and tragic, true story of the wily, wary, persevering forebears of Villaseñor.
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Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez
Author: Richard Rodriguez
ISBN-10: 0553382519
ISBN-13: 9780553382518
Published: 2004-02-03
Publisher: Dial Press Trade Paperback
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Book Description:
Hunger of Memory is the story of Mexican-American Richard Rodriguez, who begins his schooling in Sacramento, California, knowing just 50 words of English, and concludes his university studies in the stately quiet of the reading room of the British Museum. Here is the poignant journey of a “minority student” who pays the cost of his social assimilation and academic success with a painful alienation — from his past, his parents, his culture — and so describes the high price of “making it” in middle-class America. Provocative in its positions on affirmative action and bilingual education, Hunger of Memory is a powerful political statement, a profound study of the importance of language ... and the moving, intimate portrait of a boy struggling to become a man.From the Paperback edition.
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The Black Hand: The Bloody Rise and Redemption of "Boxer" Enriquez, a Mexican Mob Killer
Author: Chris Blatchford
ISBN-10: 006125729X
ISBN-13: 9780061257292
Published: 2008-09-23
Publisher: William Morrow
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Book Description:
An astonishing and groundbreaking look at the Mexican Mafia, The Black Hand is an unprecedented story of depravity, violence, and redemption Rene "Boxer" Enriquez grew up on the violent streets of East L.A., where gang fights, robberies, and drive-by shootings were fueled by rage, drugs, and alcohol. When he finally landed in prison—at the age of nineteen—Enriquez found an organization that brought him the respect he always wanted: the near-mythic and widely feared Mexican Mafia, La Eme. What it saw in Enriquez was a young man who knew no fear and would kill anyone—justifiably or not—in the blink of an eye. That loyalty and iron will drove him up the ranks as a mob enforcer and ultimately to the upper echelons, where he would help rule for nearly two decades. He helped La Eme become the powerful and violent organization that it is now, with a base army of approximately sixty thousand heavily armed gang members who control the prison system and a large part of California crime. Arguably the most dangerous gang in American history, its reach is growing. And now award-winning investigative journalist Chris Blatchford, with the unprecedented cooperation of Rene Enriquez, reveals the inner workings, secret meetings, and elaborate murder plots that make up the daily routine of the Mafia brothers. It is an intense, never-before-told story of a man who devoted his life to a bloody cause only to find betrayal and disillusionment. After years of research and investigation, Blatchford has delivered a historic narrative of a nefarious organization that will go down as a classic in mob literature.
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When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir (A Merloyd Lawrence Book)
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
ISBN-10: 0306814528
ISBN-13: 9780306814525
Published: 2006-02-28
Publisher: Da Capo Press
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Book Description:
Esmeralda Santiago's story begins in rural Puerto Rico, where her childhood was full of both tenderness and domestic strife, tropical sounds and sights as well as poverty. Growing up, she learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs in the mango groves at night, the taste of the delectable sausage called morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. As she enters school we see the clash, both hilarious and fierce, of Puerto Rican and Yankee culture. When her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually take on a new identity. In this first volume of her much-praised, bestselling trilogy, Santiago brilliantly recreates the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years and her tremendous journey from the barrio to Brooklyn, from translating for her mother at the welfare office to high honors at Harvard.
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Breaking Through
Author: Francisco Jimenez
ISBN-10: 0618342486
ISBN-13: 9780618342488
Published: 2002-10-01
Publisher: Sandpiper
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Book Description:
At the age of fourteen, Francisco Jiménez, together with his older brother Roberto and his mother, are caught by la migra. Forced to leave their home, the entire family travels all night for twenty hours by bus, arriving at the U.S. and Mexican border in Nogales, Arizona. In the months and years that follow, Francisco, his mother and father, and his seven brothers and sister not only struggle to keep their family together, but also face crushing poverty, long hours of labor, and blatant prejudice. How they sustain their hope, their goodheartedness, and tenacity is revealed in this moving sequel to The Circuit. Without bitterness or sentimentality, Francisco Jiménez finishes telling the story of his youth.
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The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands
Author: Margaret Regan
ISBN-10: 0807001309
ISBN-13: 9780807001301
Published: 2010-10-12
Publisher: Beacon Press
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Book Description:
Dispatches from Arizona—the front line of a massive human migration—including the voices of migrants, Border Patrol, ranchers, activists, and others For the last decade, Margaret Regan has reported on the escalating chaos along the Arizona-Mexico border, ground zero for immigration since 2000. Undocumented migrants cross into Arizona in overwhelming numbers, a state whose anti-immigrant laws are the most stringent in the nation. And Arizona has the highest number of migrant deaths. Fourteen-year-old Josseline, a young girl from El Salvador who was left to die alone on the migrant trail, was just one of thousands to perish in its deserts and mountains. With a sweeping perspective and vivid on-the-ground reportage, Regan tells the stories of the people caught up in this international tragedy. Traveling back and forth across the border, she visits migrants stranded in Mexican shelters and rides shotgun with Border Patrol agents in Arizona, hiking with them for hours in the scorching desert; she camps out in the thorny wilderness with No More Deaths activists and meets with angry ranchers and vigilantes. Using Arizona as a microcosm, Regan explores a host of urgent issues: the border militarization that threatens the rights of U.S. citizens, the environmental damage wrought by the border wall, the desperation that compels migrants to come north, and the human tragedy of the unidentified dead in Arizona’s morgues.
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G-Dog and the Homeboys: Father Greg Boyle and the Gangs of East Los Angeles
Author: Celeste Fremon
ISBN-10: 0826344852
ISBN-13: 9780826344854
Published: 2008-08-16
Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
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Book Description:
Father Gregory J. Boyle, SJ, is a native of Los Angeles, a Jesuit priest, and founder of Homeboy Industries, an economic development and jobs program begun in 1988 for at-risk and gang-involved youth. "A great many kids in my neighborhood don't plan their futures; they plan their funerals." G-Dog and the Homeboys presents the story of Boyle's unconventional ministry and its extraordinary successes. In this expanded, updated edition, Celeste Fremon has returned to East L.A. to report on gang members she first profiled fifteen years ago. Using their individual stories as models, she examines what policy makers should know about gang intervention now, years later.About the previous edition:"[Celeste Fremon] offers [Father] Boyle as an example of how approaching gang violence with an eye towards prevention and intervention can be much more effective than simply aiming for 'lock-'em-up and-throw-away-the-key' suppression. Throughout she includes the words of the gang members themselves as they reflect on their lives and what would aid them in improving their circumstances. In this new edition, she adds an afterword that follows up on the fates of a number of the individuals discussed in the main body of the text."--streetgangs.com
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Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Toni Morrison Lecture)
Author: Edwidge Danticat
ISBN-10: 0691140189
ISBN-13: 9780691140186
Published: 2010-08-30
Publisher: Princeton University Press
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Book Description:
"Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I've always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them."--Create Dangerously In this deeply personal book, the celebrated Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and exile, examining what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. Inspired by Albert Camus' lecture, "Create Dangerously," and combining memoir and essay, Danticat tells the stories of artists, including herself, who create despite, or because of, the horrors that drove them from their homelands and that continue to haunt them. Danticat eulogizes an aunt who guarded her family's homestead in the Haitian countryside, a cousin who died of AIDS while living in Miami as an undocumented alien, and a renowned Haitian radio journalist whose political assassination shocked the world. Danticat writes about the Haitian novelists she first read as a girl at the Brooklyn Public Library, a woman mutilated in a machete attack who became a public witness against torture, and the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and other artists of Haitian descent. Danticat also suggests that the aftermaths of natural disasters in Haiti and the United States reveal that the countries are not as different as many Americans might like to believe. Create Dangerously is an eloquent and moving expression of Danticat's belief that immigrant artists are obliged to bear witness when their countries of origin are suffering from violence, oppression, poverty, and tragedy.
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