¡Chicana Power! Contested Histories of Feminism in the Chicano Movement

Maylei Blackwell's book is an in-depth study of women's involvement in the Chicano Movement (el movimiento) of the late 1960s and 1970s. As Chicanos in the US organized and protested in efforts to address social issues faced by the community, women began to actively engage with the many gender gaps within the movement. This ultimately led to new forms of gender consciousness, awareness and political identities that challenged the confines of Chicano nationalism. Blackwell draws on oral history and archival research to illustrate these struggles, and provides examples of pioneering Chicana activists, theorists, and feminist organizations. (JSTOR Daily)

"Blackwell's !Chicana Power! offers a compelling microhistory that invites readers to drill down into the 'disturbances and shifts'... Blackwell seeks to make an intervention into how historians frame the Chicana/o movement, and while her focus on Chicana voices invites comparison to important works in this vein... Blackwell's aim is to broaden not only the cast of characters in movement narratives but also the epistemological registers of movement historiography itself." - Signs "The Chicano movement of the 1960s and 1970s gained national prominence fighting discrimination against Mexican Americans, but women's contribution to the cause is frequently downplayed. In !Chicana Power!, Chicano studies professor Maylei Blackwell shines light on Mexican American women's fight for equality. For the book, Blackwell drew on documents written by Chicana activists and oral histories gathered over the past 20 years to create 'the first book-length study of women in the Chicano movement.' The book focuses on Anna NietoGomez, a Chicana theorist and founder of Hijas de Cuauhtemoc, a feminist newspaper and organization from Long Beach, California, that opposed male domination, racism, and classism. Blackwell notes that Chicana activists faced numerous hurdles to social equality, foremost amongst them the 'chauvinism, discrimination, and sexual harrassment' of male Chicano movement leaders. Tracing the role of women in the movement's development, the book paints an illuminating picture of Chicano movement history from a feminist perspective." - NACLA Report on the Americas "This is an excellent study that can be used in Chicano and Chicana literature courses, as well as women's and gender studies and Latina studies classes. It is a book written with passion that uses fundamental theoretical oral history and ethno- graphic practices."--The Oral History Review