La Familia: Chicano Families in the Urban Southwest, 1848 to the Present - Softcover

"Using the combined theoretical perspectives of Mark Poster and Barbara Laslett as an initial framework for this work, Richard Griswold del Castillo recreates the history of Mexican American families in four Southwest communities: Tucson, Los Angeles, San Antonio, and Santa Fe. . . . It can certainly be said that Castillo has added to the understanding of the historical and contemporary Mexican American family." |". . . Concise and fascinating . . ."|"La Familia is an innovative historical study of a social institution vital to Mexican-American culture-the family-in a setting equally crucial to understanding Mexican-American history-the American Southwest. Griswold's study represents an important advance in concept and practice of Chicano social history."|"Castillo has written the first important historical examination of the Mexican-American family."

In detailed historical analyses of Mexican immigration, economic class struggle, intermarriage, urbanization and industrialization, regional differences, and discrimination and prejudice, La Familia demonstrates how such social and economic factors have contributed to the contemporary diversity of the Mexican-American family. By comparing their family experience with those of European immigrants, he discloses important dimensions of Mexican-American ethnicity.