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Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez (1925–2021)

Författare till De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century

8+ verk 333 medlemmar 2 recensioner

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Verk av Elizabeth "Betita" Martínez

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This is a big, rich celebration of images and information about Chicanas, past and present. I read it for the Read and Resist Challenge of books currently being banned in Arizona.

500 Years is not your usual history book with lots of connected text, impartial prose, and interpretation. Instead this is like a scrapbook, full of drawings and photos, usually two to six per page. The text is brief and in both Spanish and English. People and events are identified enough to raise curiosity, but often not enough to satisfy it. The accompanying bibliography is a starting place for further research.

The book starts with the period before the arrival of the Spanish, but most of the coverage is about later periods. There is extensive discussion of Chicanas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We see women in the Mexican revolutions, as labor organizers and teachers, and creating their own societies to assist each other. More than half of the book devoted to topical chapters about Chicana activities in recent decades. These include women in the grape boycott, in feminist organizations, as lesbians, as writers, and as elected officials.

This is not a book to be read straight through or used as a reference book. It is meant to be browsed and savored over and over in schools and homes so that the photographs of all those empowered Chicanas can soak in. Because it is bilingual and full of pictures it can be appreciated by individuals of various ages and with a variety of language skills.

I recommend 500 Years strongly. This is a book that belongs in school rooms where it can be absorbed by all students, not simply the Chicana ones. Perhaps then no one, regardless of gender or ethnic background, would try to censor such books.
… (mer)
 
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mdbrady | Feb 22, 2012 |
I found this in a used bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. It consists of letters written to friends and family by white student volunteers who traveled to Mississippi during the "Freedom Summer" of 1965 to support the drive for voter registration by African Americans.

The letters give a visceral sense of what it was like to plunge from the position of privileged and safe lives into the Civil Rights struggle. Reading the students' accounts of violence, intimidation, and disregard for the law makes the era immediate in a way that a formal history cannot. For a moment you feel what it is like to *live* history, to be in the midst of momentous events and not know what the outcome will be. And to fear for your life in very real and practical terms.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in personal accounts of one moment in the Civil Rights movement. But I also want to emphasize that "Letters from Mississippi" only provides perspectives from whites. People who -- however passionately devoted to the cause -- are outsiders facing the brutal effects of racism for a few weeks. You'll need to turn to other books for the perspective of African Americans for whom the "Freedom Summer" was not just a three-month journey into a world of hatred, but a lifetime struggle. The book was tattered and clearly much read by the time I purchased it. I often wonder who turned the pages before me and what they thought as they read these letters.
… (mer)
 
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ElizabethChapman | Oct 31, 2009 |

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Statistik

Verk
8
Även av
1
Medlemmar
333
Popularitet
#71,381
Betyg
3.9
Recensioner
2
ISBN
22
Språk
1

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