In the link below you’ll find a short video clip of me explaining what my Humanities Washington talk (“From Mexican to Mexican-American: A Family Immigrant Story”) offers to the listener. My talks, featured throughout 2019, have already started and, so far, it’s been delightful. See a separate posting for dates and places.
INVITE CARLOS B. GIL TO TALK ON MEXICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE MEMBERS OF YOUR ORGANIZATION IN ENGLISH OR SPANISH THROUGH HUMANITIES WASHINGTON
How? (See Spanish below)
Applications are open to host a Speakers Bureau event for 2019. Learn more and apply today at https//www.humanities.org/program/speakers-bureau/
If you have any questions? Contact Hannah Schwendeman at hannah@humanities.org or call 206-682-1770 ext. 101
What is Humanities Washington?
Humanities Washington’s Speakers Bureau is a statewide program that offers high-quality speakers who give engaging presentations on history, politics, art, and everything in between. Funding, resources, and promotion are provided to create successful events in your community. Last year, we partnered with over 175 organizations to reach more than 12,000 Washington residents.
Take a look at our 33 new speakers, carefully selected for their expertise, exciting topics, and ability to inspire discussion at, https//www.humanities.org/programs/upcoming-speakers/
Check out Carlos B. Gil as the Humanities Washington speaker on Mexican immigration here: https://www.humanities.org/speaker/carlos-gil/
Name of Gil’s talk:
“From Mexican to Mexican-American: A Family Immigration Story.”
As immigration has become more hotly debated in the United States, the arguments have become cartoonish, with one side often painted as naïve and another as xenophobic. What has become lost is the human story of immigration to America, with all its complexity, heartache, and hope.
Carlos B. Gil sought to understand Mexican immigration to the United States by tracing his family’s history from the 1920’s to the 1970’s. In the process, he discovered the excitement, culture shock, inter-family conflict, and questions of identity that so many face who are seeking a better life in another place. Based on his book, We Became Mexican-American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream, his talk explores these topics, including immigration to Washington State, all through the lens of a single family’s story.
Carlos B. Gil is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Washington, where he taught the history of Mexico and other Latin American countries for over thirty years. He previously toured the state offering a public lecture entitled, “The Hispanization of the United States.” A Spanish language version of his book will be available in early 2019.
Gil lives in Seattle.
This talk is available in both English and Spanish.
INVITA A QUE CARLOS B. GIL DÉ UNA CHARLA ACERCA DE LA INMIGRACIÓN MEXICANA A LOS MIEMBROS DE TU ORGANIZACIÓN A TRAVÉS DE HUMANITIES WASHINGTON
¿Cómo?
Haz tu solicitud. Las solicitudes están abiertas para presentar la charla del profesor Gil o cualquier otro evento del Buró de Conferencistas de Humanities Washington para el año 2019. P uedes obtener más información y presentar tu solicitud hoy en https // www.humanities.org / program / speakers-bureau /
¿Si tienes alguna pregunta? Pónte en contacto con Hannah Schwendeman en hannah@humanities.org o llama al 206-682-1770 ext. 101.
Nombre de la charla del profesor Gil:
De mexicano a mexicano-americano: la historia de una familia inmigrante.
A medida que la inmigración se ha debatido más acaloradamente en los Estados Unidos, los argumentos se han vuelto caricaturescos, con un lado pintado a menudo como ingenuo y otro como xenófobo. Lo que se ha perdido es la historia humana de la inmigración a Estados Unidos, con toda su complejidad, angustia y esperanza.
El profesor Gil trató de entender la inmigración mexicana a Estados Unidos al rastrear la historia de su propia familia desde la década de 1920 hasta la de 1970. En el proceso, descubrió la emoción, el choque cultural, el conflicto entre familias y las cuestiones de identidad que enfrentan muchos que buscan una vida mejor en otro lugar.
Basada en su libro, We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream, esta charla explora estos temas, incluyendo la inmigración al estado de Washington, todo a través de un lente puesto a la historia de su familia.
Carlos B. Gil es profesor emérito de historia en la Universidad de Washington, donde dictó clases de la historia de México y otros países de América Latina durante más de treinta años. Anteriormente, realizó una gira por el estado ofreciendo una conferencia pública titulada “La hispanización de los Estados Unidos.” Una versión en español de su libro estará disponible en los primeros meses de 2019.
El Profesor Gil vive en Seattle.
Él puede dar esta charla en inglés y español.
Vance, J.D. Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis (New York: Harper, 2018), with a new Afterword. With good reason, Hillbilly Elegy received widespread attention when it was first published. Put on the market by Harper in 2016, it coincided with the rise of Donald Trump as a presidential candidate and his getting elected soon thereafter. His popularity was attributed to his being able to speak on behalf of poor white Americans, especially those from the south who had supposedly been neglected by Democratic administrations. To my knowledge, Mr. Trump did not use the term, “hillbilly” to refer to his loyal supporters but Vance identifies hillbilly people as Trump supporters. Understanding them came to mean also understanding Trump’s inveterate supporters.
In any case, this book offers a penetrating insight into the people who live in Appalachia, mostly under-privileged whites who allegedly claim Scot-Irish descendence, a cultural note discussed far too briefly. The author writes his book in a compelling and disarming manner, boldly revealing personal family information, sometimes in a startling way. This combination helped give Hillbilly Elegy considerable attention.
The author tells us that he grew up, surrounded by his extended family, in one of the many hollows (“hollers”) scoured into the Allegheny Mountains near Jackson, Kentucky, and so his book puts a spot light on his mountain people, a harsh light. Many of them manifest varying levels of paranoia, to tell the truth. His grandfather’s obsession with guns and a willingness to draw one from behind his back at the slightest threat, his grandmother’s use of foul language and his mother’s abuse of drugs and her chronic inability to keep a husband or boyfriend are examples of this neurotic-paranoiac behavior. In addition, many of the author’s relatives and friends are described as “welfare queens,” some who “drive a Cadillac,” allergic to holding a job, and hostile to the world outside, interest in politics being unquestionably peripheral.
I concluded that a large part of the behavior described in Hillbilly is reminiscent of many poor families, working class and non-working, including Mexican American families and other minority families of color in the United States. Hillbilly thus confirmed in my mind that skin color and cultural antecedence are only casual differences among underprivileged people and they all feel put upon by the people who do not live on the edge. Except for a handful of words, here and there, the author does not make these cross-cultural observations.
Another parallel with minority families is that Mamaw, the author’s grandmother, was able to recognize a gem in the rough, despite her educational and social limitations: the gem is the author, himself. She nurtures him, because his parents couldn’t, even when she skewers him with unexpectedly obscene language, and helps him become somebody (a Yale lawyer and author!). This happens in minority communities too where someone discovers a child possessing enough internal fire to escape the ghetto, in this case, to flee the “hollers” of Kentucky. This book is an elegy to the author’s grandmother, most of all.
Mamaw takes young Vance to live in Middletown, Ohio. On page 252 the author writes that he felt like a “cultural emigrant” in Ohio. He came to regard white middle-class people in Middletown as aliens and so the latter half of Hillbilly Elegy offers an account of his painful assimilation into White Middle-Class America.
Blacks, who fled the South in the 1940’s, landing in places like Detroit, felt something similar, just more extreme. Immigrants, Mexican or otherwise, know fully well what it feels to be a “cultural emigrant,” as I show in my own book, Becoming Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream.
Hillbilly Elegy helps us understand less privileged white Americans to be sure. But, as I note, it is a study of poor people anywhere. And, for this reason it also contains cross-cultural implications of the kind I identify here that many emigrants from Appalachia might not relish.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 1, 2016
VOTED “BEST BIOGRAPHY”
AUTHOR TELLS OF THE HARD RESOLVE
HIS MEXICAN IMMIGRANT FAMILY NEEDED
TO SETTLE AND THRIVE IN AMERICA
KENMORE, WA. We Became Mexican American narrates the story of a family emigrating from Mexico to the United States in the 1920s. Author and family member, Carlos B. Gil, tells how his folks settled against all odds to pursue the American Dream in southern California. This award-winning book offers you the following:
It reviews what the Latino immigration experience represented for the author’s family,
It explores the cultural shock of arriving in the U.S. for the first time,
including the difficulties of raising children in a new culture,
It unveils the cultural conflicts inside the family as the children began growing up in America,
It describes living in a Mexican barrio near Los Angeles, California, and it
It discusses the personal process of slowly becoming Mexican American.
We Became Mexican American was awarded “BEST BIOGRAPHY” in two book competitions in the United States in 2013. And, in 2015 it won an “HONORABLE MENTION in Biography/Autobiography” at the 2015 Book Festival in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The 2013 honors came from The 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30, 2013: 1) Best Biography in English and 2) Best Latino Focused Work. On March 8th his book also won Best Biography at the 2012-2013 cycle of the Los Angeles Book Festival for independent authors and publishers. As a result, his book “sits” at “The Table of Honor,” digitally speaking, which you can visit at: http://tableofhonor.com/?product_cat=biographyautobiography ).
For more information see http://www.facebook.com/WeBecameMexicanAmerican.
To obtain your own copy, go to:
barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, or special ordering through your neighborhood bookstore.
For review copies or ordering multiple copies go to:
http://diversitycentral.com/diversity_store/books.php,
or send an email to orders@diversitycentral.com
The author is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington.
We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream
was published in 2012 and revised in 2015.
Trade Paperback; $18.99; 422 pages; ISBN 978-0-9899519-1-3
Trade Hardback; $26.99; 422 pages; ISBN 978-0-9899519-06
E-book, $3.99: ISBN 978-0-9899519-2-0
2013 BEST BIOGRAPHY, at the 2012-2013 cycle of the Los Angeles Book Festival March 8th for independent authors and publishers.
2013 THE TABLE OF HONOR at http://tableofhonor.com/?product_cat=biographyautobiography for “the best of international book festivals.”
2013 BEST BIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH at the 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30th.
2013 BEST LATINO FOCUSED NONFICTION BOOK at the 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30th.
2015 HONORABLE MENTION IN BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY at the 2015 Book Festival in Amsterdam (The Netherlands).
2016 BEST BOOK IN THE CATEGORY OF BIOGRAPHY from Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, National Association of Book Entrepreneurs, Winter.
2017 Featured on the front cover of Book Dealers World (vol. 2 no. 38 Spring) National Association of Book Entrepreneurs.
We Became Mexican American was published in 2012 by XLibris and a revised edition in 2014 by The GilDeane Group.