The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory
This engrossing, unexpectedly timely study of the politics of cultural nationalism resurrects the hidden history ofla pachuca, the female counterpart to the 1940spachuco, the zoot suit–wearing Mexican-American hipster made notorious by two consecutive wartime flashpoints: 1942's Sleepy Lagoon case and 1943's Zoot Suit Riots. Ramírez (Through an East-West Gaze) builds on the best recent scholarship to argue thatla pachuca's sexually charged and gender-ambiguous presence in WWII–era Los Angeles made her so fraught a figure of resistance to both dominant and ethnic norms of feminine behavior that she was difficult to incorporate in narratives shaping Latino identity. A generation later, a nascent Chicano movement re-appropriated the pejorative archetype ofel pachucoas a symbol of rebellious pride but continued to vilify or ignore the female zoot-suiter—reflecting, the author contends, the entrenched patriarchal and traditional gender norms in Chicano and U.S. nationalism at large. A vital addition for those interested in American ethnic and cultural studies as well as studies of sexuality and visual culture, this book speaks forcefully to current Obama-era and post–Prop 8 debates over race, ethnicity, sexuality, patriotism and citizenship.(Feb.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.