MALCS Archive

(MALCS) Women Active in Letters and Social Change

“I’m Neither Here nor There”: New Book by Patricia Zavella

Check out a new title by UCSC Professor of Latino & LatAm Studies Patricia Zavella,  I‘m Neither Here nor There: Mexicans’ Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, published by Duke University Press.

“One of the surprises was finding how diverse people were,” she said. Zavella, the outgoing chair of LALS, had shared an assumption that immigrant populations in this region hailed from a relatively narrow area.  But the surveys taken at local health fairs in 2006, showed respondents were from 19 states in Mexico (out of 31 states and one federal district.)

“It was an incredible surprise,” she said of all the places people were from. What she found common, however, was ambivalent feelings of identity by migrants and by Mexican Americans.

Zavella’s book is based on research from 1993 to 2006. She conducted life histories of 76 people to document their experiences related to migration and poverty.  One phenomenon she describes is residents’ “peripheral vision,” that “signals ways in which people always have Mexico in the back of their minds”

—article continues at UCSC news site

 

 

 

 

Congrats to Associate Professor Marivel Danielson!

Seline Szkupinski Quiroga writes:

Colegas, I wanted to share the wonderful news that our colleague and member of the 2010 MALCS Arizona State Conference organizing committee Dr. Marivel Danielson has been promoted to Associate Professor and been granted tenure.

Felicitaciones!

MALCSista Gabriella represents U.S. in India’s Poetry Fest

So proud of our Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs!

She pulled the book from her shelf and humbly agreed to read. And when she spoke, she did so in a poet’s voice, with conviction, passion and life.
“…I remember asking you if you had too much to deal with and you turned around and said to me in perfect Spanish: Nunca sabemos donde va a romperse la tela profesora. (We never know where the cloth will rip, professor).”

The poetry of professor Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs not only spans multiple languages but multiple continents as well.  Recently, Gutierrez y Muhs was selected to be the featured American poet at this year’s International Festival of Poetry, known as Kritya 2011, held in Nagpur, India.

To be nominated to such a position, a poet must be recommended by several other poets. Gutierrez y Muhs felt particularly honored when she found out that Alicia Partnoy, the chair of Spanish at Loyola Marymount, a poet, and social justice activist, was just one of the many people who submitted Gutierrez y Muhs’ name.

“It was particularly important because [Partnoy] is so incredible,” said Gutierrez y Muhs. “She’s done marvelous work in every way, [and it’s] invaluable that such a human being would recommend me.”

But Gutierrez y Muhs shines in her own way. In this day and age where issues involving identity and race are slowly building up in our country, Gutierrez y Muhs sees it as a wonderful opportunity to be the featured American poet. This is because she feels that she is not only the representative of America, but she is the face of America as well.

“I am Latina, but I’m also a Chicana, I’m also Mexican, I’m also American. I’m all those subjectivities,” Gutierrez y Muhs said. “So I find it particularly ironic and marvelously wonderful that I would be [nominated].”
[Read more…] about MALCSista Gabriella represents U.S. in India’s Poetry Fest

President Rusty Barceló!

The Board of Regents of
Northern New Mexico College
requests the honor of your presence at the
Inauguration of
Dr. Nancy “Rusty” Barceló
as twentieth President of
Northern New Mexico College
October 28, 2010 at 2:00 p.m.
Nick L Salazar Center for Arts
Española, New Mexico 87532

Reception to follow in the
Joseph Montoya Administration Building Commons [Read more…] about President Rusty Barceló!

Announcing Dr. Lorena V. Marquez

Professor Linda Heidenrech of the Women’s Studies Department at Washington State University, is proud to announce that

“Lorena V. Marquez successfully defended her dissertation at UC San Diego.  Her work focuses on Chicana/o histories in Sacramento, CA.  She is now Dr. Lorena V. Marquez!”

Congratulations from all of us, Dr. Marquez!

Sonia Sotomayor Confirmed on SCOTUS

POLITICS-US-USA-SOTOMAYOR

Today, at 12:30 pm on Thursday, August 6, the United States Senate voted 68-31 to confirm President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Sotomayor is the first Latina justice, and just the third woman to serve.

Andale, Mujer!

Teatro Chicana Honored with PopCulture prize

Teatro Chicana: A Collective Memoir and Selected Plays
Edited by Laura E. Garcia, Sandra M. Gutierrez, and Felicitas Nuñezteatrochicana

This collection has been awarded the Susan Koppelman Award for the Best Edited Volume in Women’s Studies in Popular and American Culture in 2008. This award is given by the Popular Culture/American Culture Association. The first print run paperback  of “Teatro Chicana” has sold out. University of Texas Press is reprinting.

As reviewed by Monica Teresa Ortiz at Feminist Review:
(also see this review at La Bloga)

Co-Editor Sandra M. Gutiérrez writes in her entry: “As far as the Teatro de las Chicanas was concerned, what we lacked in theatrical training and sophistication, we more than made up for with ganas and deter-mination.”  There is no better way to summarize this book than that. The editors put together a wide range of memoirs from Xicanas in the first part of the book and then have actos in the second half. Although Teatro Chicana covers an important and sometimes ignored aspect of the growing Chicano literary field, the strength of the book is in the memoirs – a gutsy group of recollections about the influence of theater on various contributing Xicana writers. [Read more…] about Teatro Chicana Honored with PopCulture prize