The medicine of memory : a Mexica clan in California / by Alejandro Murguia.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Murguía, Alejandro, 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lugo family.

Olivas family.

Murguia family.

Murguía, Alejandro, 1949-.

Murguía, Alejandro.

Mexican Americans--California--Biography.

Mexican Americans.

Mexican Americans--California--History.

Mexican American families--California--History.

Mexican American families.

Aztecs--First contact with Europeans--California--History.

Aztecs.

Mexican Americans--California--San Francisco--Biography.

San Francisco (Calif.)--Biography.

San Francisco (Calif.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (257 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2002.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"People who live in California deny the past," asserts Alejandro Murguía. In a state where "what matters is keeping up with the current trends, fads, or latest computer gizmo," no one has "the time, energy, or desire to reflect on what happened last week, much less what happened ten years ago, or a hundred." From this oblivion of memory, he continues, comes a false sense of history, a deluded belief that the way things are now is the way they have always been. In this work of creative nonfiction, Murguía draws on memories—his own and his family's reaching back to the eighteenth century—to (re)construct the forgotten Chicano-indigenous history of California. He tells the story through significant moments in California history, including the birth of the mestizo in Mexico, destruction of Indian lifeways under the mission system, violence toward Mexicanos during the Gold Rush, Chicano farm life in the early twentieth century, the Chicano Movement of the 1960s, Chicano-Latino activism in San Francisco in the 1970s, and the current rebirth of Chicano-Indio culture. Rejecting the notion that history is always written by the victors, and refusing to be one of the vanquished, he declares, "This is my California history, my memories, richly subjective and atavistic."

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface: Maize for the Metate

Phantoms in the mirror

The “good old mission days” never existed

Josefa of Downieville: The Obscure Life and Notable Death of a Chicana in Gold Rush California

Triptych: Memories of the San Fernando Valley

Gathering thunder

Tropi(lo)calidad Macondo in La Mission

Petroglyph of memory

The Marin headlands: A Meditation on Place

The homecoming of an Azteca-mexica clan

Notes

Selected bibliography

Acknowledgments

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [219]-226).

ISBN:

0-292-79637-4

OCLC:

632720792