Velvet Barrios

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxviii

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2. A Barrio Altar: Heroes & Icons

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. A Chicana Hagiography for the Twenty-first Century

      • Rita Cano Alcalá

      Pages 3-15

   3. In Search of the Authentic Pachuco

      • Arturo Madrid

      Pages 17-40

   4. The “Macho” Body as Social Malinche

      • Gabriel S. Estrada

      Pages 41-60

3. Mythic Barrios: Cultural Myths

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 61-61

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   2. Deconstructing the Mythical Homeland

      • Laura Gutiérrez

      Pages 63-74

   3. A Poverty of Relations

      • Ralph Rodríguez

      Pages 75-88

   4. “Tanto Tiempo Disfrutamos…”

      • Dionne Espinoza

      Pages 89-106

   5. The Verse of the Godfather

      • Richard T. Rodríguez

      Pages 107-122

4. Barrio Rites: Popular Rituals

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123

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   2. Revisiting the Chavez Ravine

      • Eric Avila

      Pages 125-139

   3. La Quinceañera

      • Karen Mary Davalos

      Pages 141-162

   4. Only Cauldrons Know the Secrets of Their Soups

      • Miguel A. Segovia

      Pages 163-178

   5. Cruising Through Low Rider Culture

      • Denise Michelle Sandoval

      Pages 179-196

5. Border Barrios: “A Tradition of Long Walks”

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 197-197

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   2. Rights of Passage

      • Alicia Gaspar de Alba

      Pages 199-213

   3. Gendered Bodies and Borders in Contemporary Chican@ Performance and Literature

      • Suzanne Chávez-Silverman

      Pages 215-227

   4. Lost in the Cinematic Landscape

      • Domino Renee Pérez

      Pages 229-247

6. Velvet Barrios: Este-reo-tipos/Stereotypes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 249-249

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In Chicana/o popular culture, nothing signifies the working class, highly-layered, textured, and metaphoric sensibility known as "rasquache aesthetic" more than black velvet art. The essays in this volume examine that aesthetic by looking at icons, heroes, cultural myths, popular rituals, and border issues as they are expressed in a variety of ways. The contributors dialectically engage methods of popular cultural studies with discourses of gender, sexuality, identity politics, representation, and cultural production. In addition to a hagiography of "locas santas," the book includes studies of the sexual politics of early Chicana activists in the Chicano youth movement, the representation of Latina bodies in popular magazines, the stereotypical renderings of recipe books and calendar art, the ritual performance of Mexican femaleness in the quinceañera, and mediums through which Chicano masculinity is measured.

• Cultural Studies
• culture
• gender
• identity
• methods
• Nation
• nationalism
• politics
• poverty
• Presse
• Ritual
• Tradition
• women
• Tradition
• women

ALICIA GASPAR DE ALBA is Associate Professor of Chicana/o Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches courses on barrio popular culture, border consciousness, lesbian literature and creative writing. She is the author of Chicana Art Inside/Outside the Master's House (Texas 98) and Sor Juana's Second Dream (New Mexico 99).

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