Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of (Re) Presentation in the United States - Softcover

Hispanic or Latino? Mexican American or Chicano? Social labels often take on a life of their own beyond the control of those who coin them or to whom they are applied. In "Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives" Suzanne Oboler explores the history and current use of the label "Hispanic", as she illustrates the complex meanings that ethnicity has acquired in shaping our lives and identities. Exploding the myth of cultural and national homogeneity among Latin Americans, Oboler interviews members of diverse groups who have traditionally been labelled "Hispanic", and records the many different meanings and social values which they attribute to this label. She also discusses the historical process of labelling groups of individuals and shows how labels affect the meaning of citizenship and the struggle for full social participation in the United States. Ultimately, she rejects the labelling process altogether, having illustrated how labels can obstruct social justice, and vary widely in meaning from individual to individual. Though we have witnessed in recent years the fading of the idealized image of US society as a melting pot, we have also realized that the possibility of recasting it in multicultural terms is problematic. "Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives" aims to understand the role that ethnic labels play in our society and brings us closer towards actualizing a society which values cultural diversity.

Suzanne Oboler is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago and founding Editor of the international academic journal Latino Studies. Her publications include: Ethnic Labels, Latino Lives: Identity and the Politics of Representation in the
United States (University of Minnesota Press, 1995); Neither Enemies nor Friends: Latinos, Blacks, Afro-Latinos (co-edited with Anani Dzidzienyo, Palgrave Press, 2005), and numerous book chapters and articles documenting the experience of Latino/as in the United States.
Deena J. Gonzalez teaches at Loyola Marymount University where she is Professor and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o Studies. An historian of the nineteenth-century southwestern United States, and the first Chicana to receive a Ph.D. from Berkeley's history department, she credits her lineage
and her mentors for her book, Refusing the Favor: The Spanish-Mexican Women of Santa Fe, 1820-1880 (Oxford Univ. Press, 1999) In addition, she has written numerous articles on race, colonization, representation, identity, and sexuality.