1935 Tejana Novel in First Issue Dust Jacket
El Mesquite: A Story of the Early Spanish Settlements Between the Nueces and the Rio Grande as Told by "La Posta del Palo Alto"
Notes: A scarce, early novel by a Latina writer. O'Shea's novel is narrated by a mesquite tree growing in South Texas over three-and-a-half centuries, from the first arrival of Spanish explorers in south Texas to the twentieth century. Texas A&M University Press republished the book in 2000, and offered the following background: "Elena Zamora O'Shea tells South Texas political and ethnographic history, filled with details of daily life such as songs, local plants and folk medicines, foods and recipes, peone/patron relations, and the Tejano ranch vocabulary... Using the literary device of the tree's narration, O'Shea raises issues of culture, discrimination, and prejudice she could not have addressed in her own voice in that day and explicitly states the Mexican American ideology of 1930s Texas."
This novel is certainly all that, while offering an idealized vision of benevolent Spanish settlers. But the book turns unexpectedly sad, as half a century of violence, lawlessness, and social disorder wracks the landscape in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The tall, stately tree (el palo alto of the title), once a place for lovers to meet, becames a gallows for lynchings and semi-judicial hangings. The book ends (spoiler alert) just before the narrator is cut down to make way for a new road. El Mesquite offers many meanings to unpack.
O'Shea, who took the surname of her British husband, grew up in South Texas in a Spanish land grant family. She was a teacher for two decades as a young woman, and writes in her brief autobiographical introduction, "When I began teaching, it nearly broke my father's heart. The women of his people had always stayed at home and accepted what came to them from their parents, without any protest."
[xvi], 80 pages. Introduction by L. B. Russell.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A very good copy in a good dust jacket, reinforced along one fold on the back (verso) of the jacket with Japanese tissue. Jacket missing some chips from the edge.
This appears to be the first issue jacket, printed on acidic paper in just one color. Another copy I have handled had blurbs printed in red on the front panel, which are absent from this copy.
Publication: Dallas, TX: Mathis Publishing Co., 1935.
Item No: #307167
Sold