The Woman in the Zoot

While researching Mexican American women’s history this past summer, I came across Catherine Ramirez’s book The Woman in the Zoot Suit. I was looking up books on Chicana history (such as Vicki L. Ruiz’s From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in 20th Century America) on Amazon and the link to the title came up under “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. This book falls under the genre of Chicano or Mexican American history, but makes an interjection in the dominant discourse by focusing exclusively on women. While other historians have written about young zoot suit men, Ramirez critiques their neglect of gender politics in thinking about how young women participated in the culture. She divides the books into chapters that individually address Pachuca discourse, style, language, and their roles/affronts to the family. Ramirez concludes that Pachucas have been ignored in the dominant zoot suit narrative because they challenge Chicano patriarchy in various ways.

I first heard about Calisphere during a conversation with Professor Genevieve Carpio. Calisphere gives readers access to primary documents from the various libraries across the University of California, with a focus on California history and culture. There are also themed collections that focus on specific periods in California history, such as “The Gold Rush Era” or “The Great Depression”, as well as exhibits on different ethnic groups under the title of “Multicultural California”. This is where I found the category of “Hispanic American”, linking to a photo exhibit that “traced the history of Hispanic Americans in California from the Mission system and Californios into the 20th century.”

Each section then provides a brief overview of each historical moment/theme on the left side of the page, with the thumbnails of the images that make up the exhibit on the right side. These sections also provide links to related collections, as well as lesson plans for K-12 teachers and “Analysis Tools” (guides and worksheets) for educational purposes.

Tumblr

Because there is very limited knowledge on Chicana women’s history in the academy, I chose to look at Tumblr as a potentially informative site. With a simple Google search, I entered the keywords “Pachuca tumblr” to see what images or blogs would appear. I found two Tumblr blogs that were particularly fascinating, falling within an implicit Tumblr genre of ethnic pride/consciousness. One belongs to “La Chicana Rosie”, who describes herself as a “well rooted Pachuca that is forever evolving”. The other belongs to another young woman who calls herself Mixtli.

Both Tumblr blogs are structured as collages of various images and morsels of text that amalgamate to create a cohesive narrative and argument about Chicana/o identity. Several of the images relate directly to Chicana/o art, history, and aesthetic.