Overview

World of Our Mothers captures the largely forgotten history of courage and heartbreak of forty-five women who immigrated to the United States during the era of the 1910 Mexican Revolution. The book reveals how these women in the early twentieth century reconciled their lives with their circumstances—enduring the violence of the Revolution, experiencing forced labor and lost childhoods, encountering enganchadores (labor contractors), and living in barrios, mining towns, and industrial areas of the Midwest, and what they saw as their primary task: caring for their families. While the women share a historic immigration journey, each story provides unique details and circumstances that testify to the diversity of the immigrant experience. The oral histories, a project more than forty years in the making, let these women speak for themselves, while historical information is added to support and illuminate the women’s voices. The book, which includes a foreword by Irasema Coronado, director of the School of Transborder Studies, and Chris Marin, professor emeritus, both at Arizona State University, is divided into four parts. Part 1 highlights the salient events of the Revolution; part 2 presents an overview of what immigrants inherited upon their arrival to the United States; part 3 identifies challenges faced by immigrant families; and part 4 focuses on stories by location—Arizona mining towns, Phoenix barrios, and Midwestern colonias—all communities that immigrant women helped create. The book concludes with ideas on how readers can examine their own family histories. Readers are invited to engage with one another to uncover alternative interpretations of the immigrant experience and through the process connect one generation with another.

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9780816546657

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Reviews

World of Our Mothers: Mexican Revolution-Era Immigrants and Their Stories is an important and unique contribution to the study of the human drive and struggle for survival as reflected in the lives of Mexican women who witnessed and survived a painful revolution in Mexico that drove them to seek safety and life in the United States. Written in their own words, these interviews give voice to poor and marginalized women who overcame a difficult historical situation and survived to create new lives in a foreign land. --David Maldonado, author of Crossing Guadalupe Street This research relates fascinating testimonios that shed light on the realities of immigrant women in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors painstakingly put forth stories that have been silenced, even erased. By uncovering these personal narratives, the authors and the book will successfully fill the gaps of an American immigration story that has historically left out the experiences of immigrant women of color. --Irma Montelongo, University of Texas at El Paso

“World of Our Mothers: Mexican Revolution–Era Immigrants and Their Stories is an important and unique contribution to the study of the human drive and struggle for survival as reflected in the lives of Mexican women who witnessed and survived a painful revolution in Mexico that drove them to seek safety and life in the United States. Written in their own words, these interviews give voice to poor and marginalized women who overcame a difficult historical situation and survived to create new lives in a foreign land.”—David Maldonado, author of Crossing Guadalupe Street “This research relates fascinating testimonios that shed light on the realities of immigrant women in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors painstakingly put forth stories that have been silenced, even erased. By uncovering these personal narratives, the authors and the book will successfully fill the gaps of an American immigration story that has historically left out the experiences of immigrant women of color.”—Irma Montelongo, University of Texas at El Paso

Author Information

Miguel Montiel, Motorola Presidential Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, retired in 2008. His doctorate is from the University of California, Berkeley. At Arizona State University, Montiel held several academic and administrative posts. His most recent book is Resolana: Emerging Dialogues on Community and Globalization. Yvonne de la Torre Montiel, PhD, is faculty emeritus at South Mountain Community College, Phoenix, Arizona, where she co-founded the Dynamic Learning Teacher Education Transfer Program. Her PhD is from Arizona State University, and she served as Education Coordinator at Valle del Sol, a community-based organization in Phoenix. De la Torre Montiel is a fourth-generation Arizonan.

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