Old Spain in Our Southwest
Publication: New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936. First edition.
Notes: This early Chicana work "is a series of reminiscence by educator and writer Nina Otero-Warren. Among them are stories influenced by folkloric material gathered by the Federal Writers Project during the 1930s. These stories reveal a sense of urgency that stems from the perception that the traditions and values of her Hispanic heritage were disappearing. Otero-Warren felt the isolation and alienation of this disappearance as she mourned an idealized Spanish past while trying to survive the transition to an Anglicized world... [Otero] was active in politics and in 1917 chaired New Mexico's suffragettes' chapter. She served a–s Santa Fe County school superintendent, held a position in President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, and was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, but was not elected."—Herencia, edited by Alejandra Balestra, p. 188–189.
This book has a troubled history with Chicano scholars because of 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.
[2:blank], x, 192, [4:blank] 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.
Item No: #9488
Price: $400