“Assault on Mexican American Collective Memory 2010-2015 — Swimming With Sharks.” Cover by Sergio Hernandez.
Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña, author of the classic “Occupied America,” has published his latest book: “Assault on Mexican American Collective Memory 2010-2015: Swimming With Sharks.”
This book uses a micro-narrative structure to explore the assault on the collective memory of Mexican Americans in the Southwest United States from 2010–2016. These communities’ survival depends on their histories and identities, which are being quickly erased by gentrification and dispersal, neoliberalism and privatization. This issue is most apparent in the education system, where Mexican American students receive inferior educations and lack access to higher education. Avoiding the overly-theoretical macro-narrative, this book uses case studies and micro-narratives to suggest possible changes and actions to address this issue. It also explores how the erasure of Mexican Americans’ history and identity mirrors society as a whole. — Information published in Amazon.com
This book puts recent events in the Southwestern United States into historical context, exploring how and why powerful elites are laying an assault on the history and identity of Mexican Americans and Latinos. It argues that neoliberalism and the privatization of schools and higher education drives this phenomenon. — Information published in Target.com
What they are saying:
Dr. Rodolfo F. Acuña, like the late Dr. Howard Zinn, is an important and a prolific historian in academia and beyond. More specifically, he’s an indispensable historian of the marginalized, the maligned and the ignored by the oppressive U.S. state. With his 1972 book publication of the classic Occupied America—among many other books, essays and social commentaries—Acuña has become one of the premier historians of the Chicana/o people. In this topical and timely book, Acuña produces another exceptional, well-written and well-cited book. In his life-long efforts to recover/preserve the Chicana/o collective memory, in this must-read book, he thoroughly documents and analyzes current and past unjust attacks against Chicana/os and Mexican immigrants by racist politicians, government officials and public figures in states like Arizona, Texas and California. In doing so, Acuña also sheds light on the heroic resistance and social activism by the attacked—i.e., millennials, students, teachers, activists, immigrants, community members, etc.—to defend their/our basic human rights, dignity and self-respect in their/our ancestral lands.
Visit:
- Amazon.com — $109.99
- Target.com — $110.00
- Walmart.com — $109.99
— Rodolfo F. Acuña is an historian, professor emeritus teaching at CSU Northridge. He is the author of “Occupied America: A History of Chicanos.” Visit http://rudyacuna.net for more information.