San Antonio College Library

Historian Vicki L. Ruiz provides the first full study of Mexican-American women in the twentieth century, in a narrative that is greatly enhanced by Ruiz's skillful use of interviews and personal stories, capturing a vivid sense of the Mexicana experience in the United States.

"This first comprehensive study of Chicanas encountering the U.S. criminal justice system is set within the context of the international war on drugs as witnessed at street level in Chicana/o barrios. Chicana Lives and Criminal Justice uses oral history to chronicle the lives of twenty-four Chicana pintas (prisoner/former prisoners) repeatedly arrested and incarcerated for non-violent, low-level economic and drug-related crimes. It also provides the...

A collection of essays dealing with the desires and struggles of Mexicans to cross the border into the United States.

"The Mexican American woman zoot suiter, or pachuca, often wore a V-neck sweater or a long, broad-shouldered coat, a knee-length pleated skirt, fishnet stockings or bobby socks, platform heels or saddle shoes, dark lipstick, and a bouffant. Or she donned the same style of zoot suit that her male counterparts wore. With their striking attire, pachucos and pachucas represented a new generation of Mexican American youth, which arrived on the public scene...

This is a collection of seminal essays on how women adapt to the structural transformations caused by the large migration from Mexico to the US, how they create or contest representations of their identities in light of their marginality, and give voice to their own agency.