Migrant longing : letter writing across the U.S.-Mexico borderlands /

In clear, concise prose, both interpretive and narrative, Chávez-García (history, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) interweaves Mexican and global sociopolitical history with the history of her family and other migrants to reveal a humanized macrohistory. In her thorough research, she employs archival records, oral histories, other primary source materials, and secondary sources but relies chiefly on more than 300 letters, which help structure her study. The period covered (20th century with focus on the 1960s--70s) was a crucial transitional period in Mexican and North American politics: economic forces controlled by Mexico's urban upper- and middle-classes squeezed the agrarian populace, and US immigration policies stiffened. As letters do, these provide the enmeshed personal perspectives of people often unaccounted for in historical narratives--in this case, Mexican working families and individuals striving for stability. Chávez-García uses the concepts of allá (there) and aqui (here) to focus her analyses on immigrants, emigrants, and transnationals and their identities based on work, domesticity, gender, intimacy, place, family relationships, and social networks. This excellent, instructive study contributes significantly to Latino studies, oral history, migration studies, politics of the Americas, gender studies, and personal history. An important and insightful work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --John B. Wolford, formerly, University of Missouri--St. Louis