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In California, Chicana detective Gloria Damasco investigates the death of a strike leader who was involved in a grape boycott. Officially the death was suicide, but Damasco thinks murder more likely. By the author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel.
In 1970 in East Los Angeles, Gloria Damasco, a feminist political activist from Oakland, and her best friend Luisa are attending a march in support of the Chicano Moratorium. After the protest turns into a riot, Gloria and Luisa discover the dead body of a 4-year old boy named Michael David Cisneros; he has been strangled and his body defiled. Working unofficially with the lead LAPD homicide investigator, Gloria and Luisa become acquainted with the dead boy's family, who are also in town from Oakland for the march. Then the key witness, a young gang member, is also murdered and the trail to the boy's killer goes cold. The story then shifts to the San Francisco Bay Area and fast-forwards to 1988. Gloria's husband, who discouraged her from continuing the investigation, has died and her daughter is grown, but she is still haunted by little Michael David's murder. Worried about Gloria's state of mind, her mother hires private investigator Justin Escobar to solve the mystery once and for all. Together, Gloria and Justin uncover a trail of international conspiracy and family tragedies before they finally learn the truth behind the 18-year old murder.
Was it a spectre from the past, some Aztec revenant that had inspired the "Black Widow" to kill her husband? Or did these chilling murders have more to do with the rights of property and inheritance, and mere greed? Who better than Gloria Damasco, that indomitable detective with a flair for clairvoyance, to unravel this intricate and pulsing plot, which winds its way from an exotic Day of the Dead celebration in San Francisco to the even more exotic sites and customs of Tepozotlan. Gloria soon finds herself in an uncanny struggle to rescue the soul of Licia, the Black Widow, who believes herself possessed by the spirit of La Malinche, the eternally condemned slayer of her mixed-blood offspring during the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Part thriller, part exploration of myth and history, Black Widow's Wardrobe is a page-turner.
Chicana detective Gloria Damasco has a ñdark gift,î an extrasensory prescience that underscores her investigations and compels her to solve numerous cases. This time, the recurring vision haunting her dreams contains two pairs of dark eyes watching her in the night, a phantom horse and rider, and the voice of a woman pleading for help. But most disquieting of all is GloriaÍs sensation of being trapped underwater, unable to free herself, unable to breathe. When Gloria is asked to help the owners of the Oro Blanco winery in CaliforniaÍs Shenandoah Valley, she finds herself on the road to the legendary Gold Country. And she canÍt help but wonder if the ever-more persistent visions might foreshadow this new case that involves the theft of a family heirloom, a pair of antique diamond and emerald earrings rumored to have belonged to MexicoÍs Empress Carlota. Soon Gloria learns that thereÍs more to the case than stolen jewelry. Mysterious accidents, threatening anonymous notes, the disappearance of a woman believed to be a saint, and a ghost horse thought to have belonged to notorious bandit JoaquÕn Murrieta are some of the pieces Gloria struggles to fit together. A womanÍs gruesome murder and the discovery of a group of young women from Mexico being held against their will in an abandoned house send Gloria on a fateful journey to a WitchesÍ Sabbath to find the final pieces of the puzzle before someone else is killed. Corpi weaves the rich cultural history of CaliforniaÍs Gold Country with a suspenseful mystery in this latest installment in the Gloria Damasco Mystery series.
Eulogy for a Brown Angel began a new chapter in the mystery genre with the creation of the first Chicana detective in American literature. Now available for the first time in paperback, readers can discover, or rediscover, Lucha CorpiÍs dynamic detective Gloria Damasco in the classic novel that started it all. A Chicano Civil Rights March has been disrupted by the Los Angeles police, resulting in the gruesome death of a prominent reporter. The tear gas has barely settled when a small, defiled body is left on a street in Los Angeles. A feisty political activist finds the murdered child and begins an investigation that will lead her on a trail of international conspiracy and bloody vengeance. Before long, two other people are dead, and Gloria is determined to piece the mystery together, no matter how long the search may last. Adding to the mystery is Gloria DamascoÍs dark gift, a puzzling extra-sensory awareness that forces her to confront situations in which solutions demand more than reason and logic. Eulogy for a Brown Angel is a fast-paced and suspenseful novel, packed with an assortment of interesting characters. A member of the international writersÍ circle Sisters in Crime, Lucha Corpi brings the intrigue to a hard-hitting conclusion in the picturesque Wine Country of Northern California.
Popular fiction, with its capacity for diversion, can mask important cultural observations within a framework that is often overlooked in the academic world. Works thought to be merely "escapist" can often be more seriously mined for revelations regarding the worlds they portray, especially those of the disenfranchised. As detective fiction has slowly earned critical respect, more authors from minority groups have chosen it as their medium. Chicana/o authors, previously reluctant to write in an underestimated genre that might further marginalize them, have only entered the world of detective fiction in the past two decades. In this book, the first comprehensive study of Chicano/a detective fiction, Ralph E. Rodriguez examines the recent contributions to the genre by writers such as Rudolfo Anaya, Lucha Corpi, Rolando Hinojosa, Michael Nava, and Manuel Ramos. Their works reveal the struggles of Chicanas/os with feminism, homosexuality, familia, masculinity, mysticism, the nationalist subject, and U.S.-Mexico border relations. He maintains that their novels register crucial new discourses of identity, politics, and cultural citizenship that cannot be understood apart from the historical instability following the demise of the nationalist politics of the Chicana/o movement of the 1960s and 1970s. In contrast to that time, when Chicanas/os sought a unified Chicano identity in order to effect social change, the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have seen a disengagement from these nationalist politics and a new trend toward a heterogeneous sense of self. The detective novel and its traditional focus on questions of knowledge and identity turned out to be the perfect medium in which to examine this new self.
ñDavid is mine!î Mrs. Renteria shouts out to her neighbors gathered about the dead but handsome young man found in the dry riverbed next to their homes in a Los Angeles barrio. ñDavid?î Tiburcio asked. ñSince when is his name David? He looks to me more like a ƒî Tiburcio glanced at the manÍs face, ñƒ a Luis.î Mrs. RenteriaÍs neighbors call out a litany of names that better suit the mysterious corpse: Roberto, Antonio, Henry, Enrique, Miguel, Roy, Rafael. The very first winner of the Chicano / Latino Literary Prize in 1974, Ron AriasÍ ñThe Wetbackî uses dark humor to reflect on the appearance of a dead brown man in their midst. This landmark collection of prize-winning fiction, poetry, and drama paints a historical and aesthetic panorama of Chicana/o and Latina/o letters over a twenty-five-year period beginning in 1974 and ending in 1999. Most, but not all, of the winning entries are featured in this anthology, which also includes second- and third-place winners, as well as honorable mentions. Now entering its thirty-first year, the award has recognized a wide variety of writers, from established ones such as Juan Felipe Herrera, Michael Nava, and Helena Maria Viramontes, to those that are lesser known. Many of the pieces in this anthology are considered to be foundational texts of Chicana/o and Latina/o literature, and those that are not as widely recognized deserve more serious study and attention. Presented in chronological order, the selected writings are primarily in English, although some are written in Spanish, and others in Spanglish. Some, like Francisco X. AlarconÍs poem ñRaices / Roots,î appear in both languages: ñMis raices / las cargo / siempre / conmigo / enrolladas / me sirven / de almohada.î ñI carry / my roots / with me / all the time / rolled up / I use them / as my pillow.î In addition to the diverse array of authors, styles, and genres, the works included in this collection cover a wide range of themes, from more political issues of ethnic, gender, and class.
Over the past several decades, Mexican Americans have made an indelible mark on American culture through the music of bands such as Santana and Los Lobos, films such as Zoot Suit, and a wide range of literature, such as Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street. Now Charles Tatum introduces students to these and other forms of artistic expression in the first volume to provide a wide-ranging overview of Chicano popular culture. Tatum explores the broad and complex arena of popular culture among Americans of Mexican descent and explains what popular culture can tell them about themselves. Reviewing a range of expressive arts, from traditional forms to electronic media, he explains the differences and similarities between Chicano popular culture and that of other ethnic groups or of Anglo society and shows how Chicano arts reflect a people's traditions and heritage. The book's coverage focuses on five areas of popular culture. It explores - Mexican American and Chicano music from the sixteenth century to the present day; - cinema, focusing on Chicano films of the past three decades; - newspapers, radio, and television, explaining the interrelationship between these media; - literature, emphasizing fiction, theater, and poetry of the last thirty years; - and fiestas, celebrations, and art, including mural and graffiti art. Tatum provides a brief overview of Mexican American social history, paying particular attention to changing cultural perspectives over the past 150 years and the evolution of el movimiento chicano. He also introduces theories of popular culture and makes them accessible to students, enabling them to better understand the material covered in the text. No other book offers such a wide-ranging introduction to these cultural expressions of Mexican Americans today. Chicano Popular Culture invites readers to share the excitement of these vital arts and, through them, to learn more about the uniqueness of America's fastest-growing minority. Chicano Popular Culture and Mexican Americans and Health are the first volumes in the series The Mexican American Experience, a cluster of modular texts designed to provide greater flexibility in undergraduate education. Each book deals with a single topic concerning the Mexican American population. Instructors can create a semester-length course from any combination of volumes, or may choose to use one or two volumes to complement other texts.
Palabras de mediodia/Noon Words is Lucha CorpiÍs pioneering collection of poems that established her as a major figure in Mexican American literature. Written in Spanish and expertly translated by Catherine Rodriguez-Nieto, the poems fairly bloom off the page in a display of lyric virtuosity. Corpi is the first of the Mexican American poets to explore through deeply personal and intimate feelings potentially explosive political topics, transculturation, the role of women, her commitment to social change, and the grand themes of love and death. Highly sophisticated, enchanting, and well steeped in the literary tradition of Juana de Ibarbourou, Federico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda, CorpiÍs poetry successfully portrays the magic of her childhood in tropical Veracruz, her move to the city and the challenges of modern life in San Luis Potosi and the San Francisco Bay Area. Particularly moving is CorpiÍs struggle to bridge the chasm between the obligations of family life and single parenthood and the career opportunities of the outside world.