Ripped Apart: Unsettling Narratives of Transnational Migration is an innovative and interdisciplinary analysis of Latina narratives of transnational migration that underscore the intersections of the physical, psychological, sociocultural, and legal / structural traumas endured by migrants and their families. Grounded in theories of narrative empathy and the representation of trauma, Ripped Apart analyzes the techniques that Latina writers of various literary genres deploy to develop empathy, interrogate the representation of migrants in dominant discourse, and condemn the structures and institutions that continue to contribute to the separation of families.
An excellent introduction to critical Latina texts that address migration and family separation, Ripped Apart incorporates an overview of US immigration policies and practices and notions of citizenship, legality, and whiteness that have resulted in conceptualizations of immigrants as permanent foreigners, criminals, or threats to US society, and provides sociohistorical context regarding the often obscured or omitted historical chapters that serve as...
The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The women’s movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily reviled as “libbers.” Inette Miller is one year out of college—a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to accompany him to war.
There are obstacles. All wives of US military are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper’s editor, Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter. Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After thirty days, she is on her own.
As one of the rare woman war correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army soldier, Miller’s experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don’t shines a light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious...
Commissioning Jewish Émigré Composers in Los Angeles, 1938–1945
by Jonathan L. Friedmann and John F. Guest
Foreword by Nick Strimple
Price: $34.95
ISBN: 9781682830796
Pub Date: March 2021
Songs of Sonderling is the story of Jacob Sonderling’s unique contributions to Jewish liturgical music. Rabbi Sonderling was many things: a descendant of Chassidic rebbes, a rationalist, a Reform rabbi, a Zionist, an army chaplain, a celebrated orator, an artistic soul. From his early career at the Hamburg Temple and German Army service in World War I, to his wandering years in the Eastern United States and founding of the Society for Jewish Culture–Fairfax Temple in Los Angeles, Sonderling cultivated a unique aesthetic vision of Judaism, a “five-sense appeal.”
Jonathan L. Friedmann and John F. Guest document and analyze Sonderling’s experience and expression of Judaism through music. Rabbi Sonderling’s vision yielded liturgical commissions from exiled Viennese Jewish composers who arrived in Los Angeles in the 1930s and 1940s. Through these musical settings, activities at the Fairfax Temple, and involvement with the Los Angeles campus of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of...
In 1936, the Texas centennial was celebrated across the state. In The Frontier Centennial, Jacob Olmstead argues that Fort Worth’s celebration of the centennial represented a unique opportunity to reshape the city’s identity and align itself with a progressive future. Olmstead draws out the Frontier Centennial from its inception as a commemorative fair to theme park enshrining the mythic West to show the various ways centennial planners, boosters, and civic leaders sought to use the celebration as a means to bolster the city’s identity and image as a modern city of the American West.
Olmstead’s retelling of the Frontier Centennial looks at two distinctive processes. The first addresses the interplay of memory, identity, and image in the evolution of the celebration’s commemorative messages. Fort Worth’s image as a progressive western metropolis also impacted other areas, less central, to Frontier Centennial planning. Debates over how outsiders would interpret features of the...
Homer Maxey was a war hero, multimillionaire, and pillar of the Lubbock, Texas, community. During the post-World War II boom, he filled the West Texas horizon with new apartment complexes, government...
What if gerrymandering were not just a hot button contemporary political issue but actually a deep story of how Texas came to be?
Gerrymandering Texas uses relevant legislation and court cases to tell the political history of the state of Texas. Writing out of decades of experience as an assistant attorney general, senate parliamentarian, expert consultant on redistricting, and law professor, Steve Bickerstaff traces the story of this political practice from 1836 up to the present and prognosticates what lies ahead for the 2020 census and 2021 redistricting.
Since redistricting is the story of boundaries, borders, and representation, Bickerstaff’s book also tells the story of Texas’s evolution over time. The various Texas constitutions are unpacked, and the changing racial makeup of the state comes into sharp relief. Democrat dominance in state governance gives way to the recent Republican dominance. Bickerstaff’s analysis of redistricting, always clear-headed and even-handed, gives new insight...
At the outset of summer break in 1959, Texas Tech senior Jerry Craft had no more enticing options than to stay home and help on the family ranch—so the telephoned offer to play for a semipro baseball...
