"Then all the chicanada came to my help"
The Mexican Immigrant: His Life-Story
Publication: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1931. First Edition.
Notes: The companion volume to Mexican Immigration to the United States, a collection of more than 75 oral histories of Mexican immigrants in the United States pursing a wide variety of work and professions. There is probably no other book up to that time that gave voice to so many Mexicans in America and thus this is a unparalleled snapshot of life in the US just before the Great Depression (the interviews were conducted in the late 1920s).
Here's a sample that might have been part of a Cormac McCarthy novel. Gilberto Hernández, who had been a printer in Mexico, describes picking cotton and being cheated by the farm manager. "I wouldn't let myself be done. We had an exchange of words and even called each other names. Then all the chicanada came to my help and we came mighty near lynching him. After that... I went around with my pistol and he with his" (p. 106).
"Gamio developed a comprehensive analysis of the Mexican immigration experience. His [studies] were based on extensive original research. The findings of these studies were presented at US Congressional hearings on immigration during the 1920s... [He was] Mexico's foremost authority on immigration" (Francisco Balderama, Decade of Betrayal, p. 165, 175).
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing stating "PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1931" on the copyright page). A very good or better copy in a dust jacket with minor loss at the corners. A nice copy of a scarce book, especially in the original dust jacket.
Item No: #180715
Sold