Thursday, October 10, 2013

Congratulations to Our VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf Featured Titles!

The VOYA Five-Foot Bookshelf is an annual collection featuring VOYA reviewers' picks for best books for professionals who serve teens. We are honored to see so many of our Libraries Unlimited titles make the list!


Adult Learners: Professional Development and the School Librarian
Carl A. Harvey II
978-1-61069-039-3
Managing Children's Services in Libraries, Fourth Edition
Adele M. Fasick and Leslie Edmonds Holt
978-1-61069-100-0
Integrating Young Adult Literature through the Common Core Standards
Rachel L. Wadham and Jonathan W. Ostenson
978-1-61069-118-5

Teen Talkback with Interactive Booktalks!
Lucy Schall
978-1-61069-289-2









Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content
Jamie Campbell Naidoo
978-1-59884-960-8
Library Leadership in the United States and Europe: A Comparative Study of Academic and Public Libraries
Peter Hernon and Niels Ole Pors, Editors
978-1-61069-126-0










View the electronic issue of VOYA here. Find the Five-Foot Bookshelf feature on pages 8 and 9.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Zoot Suit Riots

The following interview features Roger Bruns, historian and former deputy executive director of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission at the National Archives in Washington, DC. He is the author of many books, including Encyclopedia of Cesar Chavez: The Farm Workers' Fight for Rights and Justice; Negro Leagues Baseball; and Icons of Latino America: Latino Contributions to American Culture. He has written several biographies for young readers on such figures as Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr.  He is author of the forthcoming Zoot Suit Riots, part of the Landmarks of the America Mosaic series.


You have written a book to be published next spring by ABC-Clio on the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles during World War II.  First of all, what are zoot suits? 

Although the exact origins of the zoot-suit are unclear, many Mexican-American youth in Los Angeles in the early 1940s adopted the so-called “drape” look worn by African-Americans they had seen in pictures and movies, especially in eastern cities, and, most especially, in Harlem. The jazz music and the jitterbug dance craze had made their way to the West Coast along with the clothes that spoke of youthful rebellion and urban identity. There was the oversized coat with broad shoulders and ballooned and pegged pants, large broad-brimmed hat, with a watch chain often dangling down the side. Thick-soled shoes called Calcos added to the look.

Mostly, the youngsters were Mexican-Americans born in the U.S. to parents who had immigrated. Walking around the streets wearing the drapes with friends from their neighborhoods gave them, both young men and women,  a group identity – admiration from some in their own community; disgust and ridicule from others, especially Anglos.  Many young men took on the name “pachucos” and women “pachucas,” terms of uncertain origins that mostly came to mean those in adolescent gangs wearing zoot-suits. Not every pachuco wore a zoot suit, however, and certainly most members of the Mexican-American community did not consider themselves part of the pachuco rage. Indeed, the parents of many of those adolescents involved were unquestionably anxious and concerned about the fidelity of their sons and daughters to this new cultural phenomenon. 

But the zoot-suit rage grew. Pachucos intermixed English and Spanish with slang they called “Chuco,” much of it from a Caló dialect that could be traced to early Spanish wanderers and outcasts. They gathered in groups that carried names of Mexican-American neighborhoods 39th Street, White Fence, Alpine Street, and Happy Valley.

What led to riots?

Most of all, we have to remember the entrenched prejudice against Mexican-Americans in this period. It was not only invidious but out in the open for all to see. Many public facilities were closed to Mexican-Americans. Some churches would allow Mexican-Americans inside only on certain days. Many cemeteries, even those publicly operated, reserved special sections specifically for Mexican-Americans, thus separating them in death from Anglos just as they had been during life. Some theaters did allow Mexican-Americans and Afro-Americans access but only on certain nights. There were actually signs that read “No Mexicans or Dogs Allowed.”

Mexican-Americans read stories in Los Angeles newspapers that called them “undesirables.” They were accused by law enforcement officials and political leaders of being inclined to engage in criminal activities and were, therefore, a threat to law and order. When arrested for petty crimes, many were subjected to what was euphemistically called the “third degree” – from beatings with rubber hoses to “three-day hunger tests.”
The Zoot Suit Riots are inextricably linked to the infamous, so-called Sleepy Lagoon murder in August 1941 southeast of Los Angeles.  The Sleepy Lagoon was a reservoir used to irrigate crops and a swimming hole and meeting place for many Mexican-American youths. At a party at a nearby house on August 1, a young man named Jose Diaz was found dead after a brawl among a group of youngsters from the neighborhood around 38th Street and some youths from other neighborhoods. The Los Angeles Police Department, in a zealous demonstration of combating juvenile delinquency, rounded up in a dragnet more than 600 young people, mainly those who wore zoot suits. Unable to tie any single individual to the crime, a grand jury indicted over 20 youngsters for murder, an unprecedented and outrageous overreach. In the subsequent trial, marked by unbridled bias and judicial misconduct by the judge, most were convicted of first or second degree murder. They would later be released on appeal after serving significant time in jail.
Within months of the convictions, Los Angeles erupted in a riot. On June 3, 1943, with tensions escalating between U.S. sailors stationed in Los Angeles and Mexican-American zoot suiters, some 50 sailors on shore leave ventured into Mexican-American neighborhoods armed with clubs and other weapons. Their mission, supposedly in retaliation for earlier attacks on servicemen, was simple – beat up and rip the clothing from any “zoot suiter” they could find. For several days, sporadic attacks by servicemen against Mexican-Americans threw parts of downtown Los Angeles into chaos and rioting. For a week, sailors and other servicemen dragged kids off streetcars, from restaurants, and out of movie theaters. The boys were beaten and stripped of their zoot suits, a kind of ritualistic cultural humiliation.

Thousands of white civilians egged on the servicemen. At one point at the end of the week of carnage, an estimated 1000 servicemen rampaged through the Mexican district, storming into bars, penny arcades, theaters, stores, and dance halls with relative impunity. A number of taxi drivers joined the fun, offering free rides to servicemen and civilians to the riot areas. .

Eventually, with news of the riots reaching the national press and with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt referring to the spectacle as race riots against Mexican-Americans, local and military police eventually restored order. Of the many hundreds of  individuals herded off to jail, almost all were Mexican-Americans, the targets of the attackers.  They were mostly charged with disturbing the peace.

In the end, the Los Angeles City Council banned the wearing of zoot suits on Los Angeles streets.


What was the highlight of your research? In the course of your research, what discovery surprised you the most?

Records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, at NARA’s records center in Riverside, California, and at the Franklin Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, had a wealth of original documents about the deep concern of the U.S. government that the trial and riots were damaging the country’s relations with Mexico and Latin America during wartime. In late 1942, the Office of War Information (OWI), an agency designed to coordinate news releases favorable to U.S. interests during the war, worried that open hostility toward Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles was being exploited by the enemy. Axis propaganda sent to the U.S., Mexico, and other Latin American countries attacked as a sham U.S. claims that it was a democratic nation free of the persecution of minorities. The OWI sent Alan Cranston, a former journalist who would later become a U.S. Senator from California. Cranston met managing editors and publishers of all four of the major newspapers in the city encouraging them to stop slandering Mexican-Americans in their articles. He also encouraged city officials to prepare a plan to help ameliorate the conditions under which Mexican-Americans were struggling in the city.

Also State Department officials had numerous communications and face-to-face meetings with Mexican diplomatic figures trying to temper the anger and suspicions aroused by the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the riots.

What effects did the Sleepy Lagoon trial and the Zoot Suit Riots have on the Mexican-American community and how are these events from 60 years ago relevant today?

So outrageous had been the treatment accorded to Mexican-American citizens in Los Angeles during wartime that activists, reformers, and the immigrant community itself  began to fight back, to make demands, and seek ways to come together to force change against the kind of  systemic prejudice and  dehumanization so evident in the trial and the riots.

In coming years organizers would win a landmark case of Mendez v. Westminster (1947) that would outlaw segregation of Mexican-Americans in public schools. In the same year, reformers founded the Community Services Organization (CSO), a civic-action group dedicated to promote community improvement, awareness of citizenship rights and responsibilities and to fight against human and civil rights abuses. It would fight discrimination in housing, employment, and education; promote political involvement; and establish self-help programs.

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the so-called Chicano Movement produced a new generation of activists and leaders who brought to national attention a variety of issues vital to the Mexican American community and sought to remedy the ills of discrimination and powerlessness through direct political action.  In the early 1960s, Cesar Chavez, a zoot-suiter in his youth, began his historic fight to establish a union of farmworkers. One of his friends and allies, Luis Valdez, who would later be called by many “the Father of Chicano Theater, wrote a play called  Zoot Suit that opened on Broadway in 1978. It related the events of the early 1940s to the continuing struggles of Mexican-Americans and played for the first time in Mexico City in 2010, the same year that the state of Arizona passed draconian legislation against immigration. As the nation continues to grapple with such issues as immigration, fair employment and educational opportunities, and the many aspects of civil rights for Latinos, the story of the Zoot Suits Riots remains a compelling reminder of how far we have come but how daunting remain the challenges.




Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month: Encyclopedia of Latino Culture

It is important to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. U.S. Latinos/as today constitutes a dynamic and very diverse population in this country. Their growth in the past few decades has been very rapid to the point where they have already surpassed African Americans as the largest ethnic minority in the United Sates. According to the 2010 U.S. census, there had been a 43 percent increase in the Latino/a population since 2000, from a total of 35 million to over 50 million inhabitants. They are expected to become an increasingly important force culturally, politically, and economically in the next few decades. 

It is very important to understand that U.S. Latinos/as share strong cultural bonds and a common heritage and language, but at the same time they are very diverse in many other respects; their histories are different and they also differ racially and ethnically. For example, many Mexican Americans come from families that have lived in the U.S. Southwest for many generations and many others come from families who have arrived in the United States from Mexico. Many Latinos/as, whose past can be traced to countries such as Mexico, the Central American countries of Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, and the Andean countries of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile, have brought with them a rich Indian and mestizo ancestry. Many Latinos/as from the Caribbean countries of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, the island of Puerto Rico, and Brazil can trace their ancestry as far back the beginning of African slavery in the New World. It would be a mistake to think that U.S. Latinos/as form a monolithic and homogeneous group. In addition to their racial and ethnic differences, they are diverse in other ways including: economic status; political preferences; religious affiliations; education, language proficiency in both English and Spanish; rates of assimilation into U.S. society; ongoing connections to their countries of origin; customs; and cultural practices. It is this last aspect of U.S. Latino/a culture that led to the creation of the Encyclopedia of Latino Culture.

When I was asked by the editors at Greenwood Press to edit this three-volume publication, I did not hesitate. I knew that this would this would afford me a marvelous opportunity to become more knowledgeable about the breadth of U.S. Latino/a culture because most of my published research and teaching had been focused on the literature and popular culture of Mexican Americans. I knew also that in seeking out contributors to write the various entries, I would become better acquainted with experts in many different aspects of U.S. Latino/a culture. These were somewhat selfish reasons for taking on what became a two-year project, but I also believed that such an encyclopedia designed for the general reader and the high school student would be different and more accessible than similar projects. I am now in the final year of my long academic career, and am gratified that bringing this huge project to fruition will, I hope, contribute to an overall better understanding and appreciation of the rich cultural contributions and customs of U.S. Latinos/as.    




Charles M. Tatum, PhD, is the editor of the forthcoming, Encyclopedia of Latino Culture: From Calaveras to Quinceañeras, November 2013, ISBN: 978-1-4408-0098-6

He is Professor of Spanish and Chicano Studies at the University of Arizona. He was for fifteen years dean of College of Humanities. He has written and edited several books on Chicana/o literature and popular culture including Chicano Popular Culture: Que hable el pueblo (2001), Chicano and Chicana Literature: Otra voz del pueblo (2006) and Lowriders in Chicano Culture: From Low to Slow to Show (2001). He the co-founder of the journal, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture