Read more
Informationen zum Autor José Orozco is Associate Professor of History at Whittier College. Klappentext Receive our Memories is a rare study of an epistolary relationship for individuals whose migration from Mexico has been looked at en masse, but not from such a personal and human angle. The heart of the book consists of eighty translated and edited versions of letters from Luz Moreno, a poor, uneducated Mexican sharecropper, to his daughter, a recent emigre to California, in the 1950s. These are contextualized and framed in light of immigration and labor history, the histories of Mexico and the United States in this period, and family history.Although Moreno's letters include many of the affective concerns and quotidian subject matter that are the heart and soul of most immigrant correspondence, they also reveal his deep attachment to a wider world that he has never seen. They include extensive discussions on the political events of his day (the Cold War, the Korean War, the atomic bomb, the conflict between Truman and MacArthur), ruminations on culture and religion (the role of Catholicism in the modern world, the dangers of Protestantism to Mexican immigrants to the United States), and extensive deliberations on the philosophical questions that would naturally preoccupy the mind of an elderly and sick man: Is life worth living? What is death? Will I be rewarded or punished in death? What does it mean to live a moral life?The thoughtfulness of Moreno's meditations and quantity of letters he penned, provide historians with the rare privilege of reading a part of the Mexican national narrative that, as Mexican author Elena Poniatowska notes, is usually ""written daily, and daily erased."" Zusammenfassung Receive Our Memories consists of a rare set of correspondence from a poor, uneducated Mexican in the mid-20th century to his daughter who moves to the United States, putting a human face on the experience of both the immigrant and the family left behind, as well as the histories of both countries. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter 1 The Morenos of San Miguel el Alto Chapter 2 "Follow your path my beloved children, go in peace": On saying goodbye and keeping in contact Chapter 3 "Humanity cries tears of blood": On religion, epistles, and the end of the world Chapter 4 "El miserable pueblo" : On being poor and knowing it Chapter 5 "Newspapers are liars": On the importance of reading and writing Chapter 6 "The anxieties of an old man are very sad": On being old and preparing to die Afterword Bibliography Index ...
