Gente decente : a borderlands response to the rhetoric of dominance / by Leticia Magda Garza-Falcón.

Author
Garza-Falcón, Leticia [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Εdition
1st ed.
Published/​Created
Austin : University of Texas Press, 1998.
Description
xxii, 303 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Availability

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
ReCAP - Remote StoragePS153.M4 G37 1998 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    • In his books The Great Plains, The Great Frontier, and The Texas Rangers, historian Walter Prescott Webb created an enduring image of fearless, white, Anglo male settlers and lawmen bringing civilization to an American Southwest plagued with "savage" Indians and Mexicans.
    • So popular was Webb's vision that it influenced generations of historians and artists in all media and effectively silenced the counter-narratives that Mexican American writers and historians were concurrently producing to claim their standing as "gente decente," people of worth.
    • These counter-narratives form the subject of Leticia M. Garza-Falcon's study. She explores how prominent writers of Mexican descent - such as Jovita Gonzalez, Americo Paredes, Maria Cristina Mena, Fermina Guerra, Beatriz de la Garza, and Helena Maria Viramontes - have used literature to respond to the dominative history of the United States, which offered retrospective justification for expansionist policies in the Southwest and South Texas.
    • Garza-Falcon shows how these counter-narratives capture a body of knowledge and experience excluded from "official" histories, whose "facts" often emerged more from literary techniques than from objective analysis of historical data.
    • Garza-Falcon also draws on previously unused primary sources, including interviews and literature, to present a unique social-class analysis based on historical notions of identity and experience. Unlike traditional literary analysis, her work offers significant insights into the ongoing failure of the U.S. public education system to address the needs of children of Texas-Mexican (borderlands) ancestry.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (p. 281-291) and index.
    Contents
    • 1. History as Narrative
    • 2. Walter Prescott Webb's The Great Plains and The Texas Rangers: The Dissolution of History in Narrative
    • 3. The Historical Fiction of Jovita Gonzalez: Complex and Competing Class Identities
    • 4. Maria Cristina Mena's Elite, Fermina Guerra's "Folk": The Struggles of Their Distinct and Converging Worlds
    • 5. Americo Paredes's Narratives of Resistance: Property, Labor, Education, Gender, and Class Relations
    • 6. Media Reportage as "History-in-the Making": Two Short Stories by Helena Maria Viramontes
    • 7. The Texas History of Beatriz De La Garza's Narratives: Sustaining Women, Hispanic Heroes, and a Sense of Place
    • App. A. Shannon's Appraisal
    • App. B. Biographical Outline of Jovita Gonzalez's Life.
    ISBN
    • 0292728069 (alk. paper)
    • 0292728077 (pbk. : alk. paper)
    LCCN
    97048906
    OCLC
    38067660
    RCP
    C - O
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