Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory: A Novel (Chicana Matters) - Softcover

Pérez, Emma

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292721285 ISBN 13: 9780292721289

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2009

Synopsis

Runner-up, Best Historical Fiction in English, Latino Book Awards Competition, 2010

This literary adventure takes place in nineteenth-century Texas and follows the story of a Tejana lesbian cowgirl after the fall of the Alamo. Micaela Campos, the central character, witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela's Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela's travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela's journey and her romance with a black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic.

This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. Pérez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation's imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that Pérez explores—political climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American West—are current today.

About this title

About the Author:

EMMA PÉREZ is Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History and the novel Gulf Dreams.

Review:

"Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what's going to happen at the end--but you're wrong." (The Gay & Lesbian Review 2010-05-01)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0292721285
• ISBN 13: 9780292721289
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224