Overview

The history of the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective, an archive dedicated to preserving Chicana feminist knowledge of the 1970s and memory work. The late 1960s and early 1970s witnessed an explosion of publishing by Chicana activists as they took part in the Movimiento against oppression of ethnic Mexicans in the United States. Today, thousands of these documents, including written works and oral histories, have been assembled by the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective. Drawing on these unique resources, Fleshing the Archive traces the innovative Chicana knowledge projects of the Movimiento years. Seeking to think with the past rather than about it, MarÍa Cotera explores transgressive sites and discourses of Chicana knowledge, from poems and essays to newspapers, bibliographies, and testimonies. Often published independently and distributed by readers themselves, these works embodied a praxis of feminist and queer consciousness-raising. Observing the startling convergences between Chicana praxis of the 1970s and digital knowledge production in the present, Cotera argues that the Chicana archive enables transformative moments of recognition across time that unsettle supposedly objective accounts of history. The materials preserved by Chicana por mi Raza offer Chicana scholars a model of teaching and learning liberated from a corporate academy that is increasingly hostile to intellectual inquiry.

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9781477332955

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Reviews

With insight, precision, and dedication, María Cotera offers a stunning analysis of the development of Chicana feminist knowledge production and praxis. Her work will transform the way we think about Chicana and Chicano studies and enliven the way we understand and relate to historical practice. A must-read.--Elena R. Gutiérrez, University of Illinois, Chicago, coeditor of Chicago Latina Trailblazers: Testimonios of Political Activism Fleshing the Archive is for anyone who craves genuine ways of doing things differently in higher education and the museum and library worlds. It is a comprehensive roadmap for ethical archive formation and knowledge production in which Chicana feminists, including queer and lesbian feminists, have been leaders since the late 1960s. Cotera documents when and how Chicana feminists preceded the digital turn of the late twentieth century as well as their fundamental goal of connecting liberation and the redistribution of power to knowledge production and access.--Karen Mary Davalos, University of Minnesota, coeditor of Self Help Graphics at Fifty: A Cornerstone of Latinx Art and Collaborative Artmaking

Author Information

MarÍa Eugenia Cotera is an associate professor in the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her first book, Native Speakers, received the Gloria E. AnzaldÚa Book Prize. Her groundbreaking edited volume, Chicana Movidas, has been adopted in courses across the country.

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