Migrant Imaginaries: Latino Cultural Politics in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Nation of Newcomers: Immigrant History as American History)
“A sophisticated, timely, and insightful book that Schmidt Camacho has situated in the middle of one of today’s most important historiographical debates. How are we to understand border crossers whose experiences are more connected to the diasporic consequences of economic transnationalism than to the immigration metanarratives of national incorporation? Schmidt Camacho’s answer lies in her expansion of social theory to place non-rights-bearing people at the center of the conversation rather than on the periphery of the nation-state and its citizenry.”-Journal of American History,“A landmark book. . . . Highly recommended.”-Choice,“In this beautiful study, Schmidt Camacho demonstrates that Mexican migrant imaginaries affirm in songs, manifestos, poetry, novels, and testimonies visions of justice that exceed the limits of the nation-form and the logics of capital accumulation.”-Lisa Lowe,author ofImmigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics“Schmidt Camacho is quite simply one of the most exciting scholars working on Mexican immigration. She draws on history, literature, folklore, cultural studies, and ethnography to produce an unvarnished examination of Mexicano migrants from the standpoint of the people themselves. Tracing the discourses of migration beyond the nation-state and contemporary debate, she powerfully links Américo Paredes, Luisa Moreno, and the Salt of the Earth strikers within a matrix of a transnational imaginary.”-Vicki L. Ruiz,author ofFrom Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America