Old Spain in Our Southwest
Notes: A collection of reminiscences on the culture and history of Spanish New Mexico written by an early Chicana writer.
This book has a troubled history with Chicano scholars because class issues. Otero was a well-off New Mexican from a prominent family (her cousin Miguel Antonio Otero was territorial governor) and a writer seemingly comforatable with Anglo culture. Margaret García Davidson notes, writing about both Oteros, "These two writers stand at the margins of Mexican-American literary history, their works ignored, dismissed, or distorted." Yet she argues that by dismissing them, "Chicano literary critics have failed to recover the works on their own terms and have, in effect, dictated Chicano theory."
In addition to her general argument that Old Spain needs to be read on its own terms, Davidson points out that Nina Otero's account of the Penitentes offers one of the earliest Mexican American views on the distinctively Mexican American religious group.
192 pages.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing, with no later printings noted). Old review tipped onto a preliminary blank, else very good in a a very good, spine darkened dust wrapper. Despite some loss at the top of the spine, this is one of the nicer copies of this book.
Publication: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936.
Item No: #9488
Price: $250