Woman in the Zoot Suit , livre ebook

258

pages

English

Ebooks

2009

Écrit par
Ramirez Catherine S. Ramirez

Publié par
Duke University Press

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258

pages

English

Ebooks

2009

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

16 janvier 2009

EAN13

9780822388647

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

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 in the 1940s. Yet while pachucos have often been the subject of literature, visual art, and scholarship, The Woman in the Zoot Suit is the first book focused on pachucas.Two events in wartime Los Angeles thrust young Mexican American zoot suiters into the media spotlight. In the Sleepy Lagoon incident, a man was murdered during a mass brawl in August 1942. Twenty-two young men, all but one of Mexican descent, were tried and convicted of the crime. In the Zoot Suit Riots of June 1943, white servicemen attacked young zoot suiters, particularly Mexican Americans, throughout Los Angeles. The Chicano movement of the 1960s-1980s cast these events as key moments in the political awakening of Mexican Americans and pachucos as exemplars of Chicano identity, resistance, and style. While pachucas and other Mexican American women figured in the two incidents, they were barely acknowledged in later Chicano movement narratives. Catherine S. Ramirez draws on interviews she conducted with Mexican American women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as she recovers the neglected stories of pachucas. Investigating their relative absence in scholarly and artistic works, she argues that both wartime U.S. culture and the Chicano movement rejected pachucas because they threatened traditional gender roles. Ramirez reveals how pachucas challenged dominant notions of Mexican American and Chicano identity, how feminists have reinterpreted la pachuca, and how attention to an overlooked figure can disclose much about history making, nationalism, and resistant identities.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

16 janvier 2009

EAN13

9780822388647

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

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Designed in Scala by Heather Hensley

Typeset by Achorn International

Printed in the United States of America on

acidfree paperb

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication

data and republication acknowledgments

appear on the last printed pages of this book.

For my parents, Vince and Edna Ramírez

And for my children, Carmen and Omar Ramírez y Porter

C O N T E N T S

Preface

xxiAcknowledgments

xxvA Note on Terminology

149

197

225

Introduction: A Genealogy ofVendidas

1. Domesticating the Pachuca

2. Black Skirts, Dark Slacks, and Brown Knees: Pachuca Style and Spectacle during World War II

3. Saying “Nothin’”: Pachucas and the Languages of Resistance

4.La Pachucaand the Excesses of Family and Nation

Epilogue: Homegirls Then and Now, from the Home Front to the Front Line

Notes

Bibliography

Index

109

137

P R E F A C E

Pero lo más sura was

that in all their

SOCIOLOGICAL

ANTHROPOLOGICAL

PSYCHOLOGICAL

& HISTORICAL

heaps & piles of bogus bullshit,

our sister—La Pachuca—of the

equal sufrimientos;

aquella carnalita que también

who also bore the brunt

de toda la carilla

remained in their textbooks 1 A N O N Y M O U S .

n his poem “Homenaje al Pachuco (Mirrored Reﬂections)” (1973),I raúlsalinas, one of the more proliﬁc and wellknown pachuco po ets of the Chicano movement, pays homage toel pachuco, the zoot 2 clad, Mexican American homeboy of the1940s and1950s. He also acknowledges this ﬁgure’s female counterpart,la pachuca, and la ments her erasure from ofﬁcial accounts of the Mexican American zoot subcultureand infamous Zoot Suit Riots. Although there were few reported serious injuries and property damage was minimal relative to other major twentiethcentury civil disturbances, the Zoot Suit Riots represent a critical violent episode in Mexican American and U.S. history. During the riots, white servicemen, some of whom were accompanied by civilians, attacked “zooters,” youths wearing zoot suits. In particular, theytargeted zootclad Mexican Americans. For at least ten days in June of1943, servicemen from across Southern California and some

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