- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Biography / Autobiography
Full Description
One afternoon in fall 2015 Cristina Devereaux Ramírez's mother called and, with a tone of urgency in her voice, asked her to come to the house and take a look at something she had discovered when she was sorting through boxes in the attic. When Ramírez arrived, she found her family sifting through papers in an old vegetable box, reading some of the more than 750 pages of Spanish language poems, short stories, fables, and dichos Ramírez's maternal grandmother, Ramona González, had written. Some pieces were works in progress, complete with word and phrase strikethroughs and handwritten notes in the margins, while others were neatly typed prose or what might have been final drafts. None of González's writings had seen the outside of that box for decades, at least since 1995 when the family matriarch passed away.
González—or Doña Ramona, as she was often called—was born in 1906 in the El Paso border barrio of Chihuahuita, sometimes referred to as the Ellis Island of the Southwest. Her writing celebrates the rich Mexican American culture of Chihuahuita, a neighborhood the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified in 2016 as one of America's most endangered historic places. A mother, corner grocery store owner, published writer, and community activist, González was one of the few Tejanas profiled in Worthy Mothers of Texas, 1776-1976
A Story of Stories from a Texas Border Barrio, Ramírez chronicles the life of her abuela with the care of a granddaughter and, with the eye of a scholar, analyzes selections from González's work and its significance to El Paso history, Chicano literature, border barrio folklore, and cross-border civic movements in the mid-twentieth century.
Contents
Table of Contents
Prologue 4
Introduction 10
Chapter One
A Trenza of Voices 16
Chapter Two
Un cuento de cuentos: A Story of Stories 33
Chapter Three
Recovering the Fading History of a Far West Texas Border Barrio: Chihauhuita 60
Cuentos del barrio: Stories from the barrio, Part I 87
Por vida de estas santas cruces yo viví en estos barrios
by Ramona González 89
By the life of these holy crosses I lived in these barrios
English translation by Neil Devereaux 139
Chapter Four
González Grocery: El corazón del barrio 192
Cuentos del barrio: Stories from the barrio, Part II 204
Mi Tiendita by Ramona González 206
My Little Store English translation by Neil Devereaux 246
Chapter Five
Doña Ramona's Barrio Literacy: Poems and Fables for Children 288
El Sol (The Sun)
293
El vuelo (The Flight)
295
El Pájaro Cenzontle y e1 Conde (The Mocking Bird and the Count) 296
Acknowledgements 299
Bibliography 300
Notes
305
Prologue
