Las Mujeres

Three very different women—a Chicana, a Jew, and an Anglo-Scot—who met at the University of Albuquerque in the 1970s, collaborate to produce an oral history of four generations of Hispanic women living in and around Albuquerque, and to consider questions about the retention and loss of ethnic identity as one becomes "American." The volume is filled with memorable stories of women and girls trying to live in harmony with each other and with men, while stressed about money, eager for education, and worried about the diminution of their cultural identities as they move from rural to city lives. Diverse and often divergent, the voices in this oral history of four generations of New Mexican-Hispanic women challenge myths and stereotypes: Twenty-one women recall life experiences spanning a period from the time New Mexico was a Spanish-speaking territory to the present.