Search

This essay reads Ramon Eduardo Ruiz's Memories of a Hyphenated Man in the context of twentieth century developments in ethnic studies in the United States. Ruiz's life story presents a generation of Mexican American intellectuals of which there were very few prior to the Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s that led to the development of Chicano Studies programs and the birth of a new and more expansive generation of Chicano intellectuals. His story tells us not only about the Mexican American condition from the 1930 to the 1960s, when Ruiz emerged as a leading historian of Mexico and in particular of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, but also about a pioneer Mexican American intellectual. This essay explores the historical dimensions of Ruiz's life, career, and academic concerns as a window to the evolving Mexican American (Chicano) experience in the United States.

Familia: Migration and Adaptation in Baja and Alta California, 1800-1975. By Robert R. Alvarez, Jr. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987. $35.00) Cannery Women/Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950. By Vicki L. Ruiz. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. $10.95) Women's Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley. By Patricia Zavella. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987. $10.95) Women on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Responses to Change. Edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Susan Tiano. (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987. $14.95)