American Literature Jovita González
by
Melina Vizcaíno-Alemán
  • LAST REVIEWED: 10 January 2022
  • LAST MODIFIED: 28 March 2018
  • DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199827251-0006

Introduction

Jovita González (b. 1904–d. 1983) was a South Texas Mexican American woman and descendant of Spanish colonizers of the Rio Grande Valley. The exact date of her birth is inconsistent, but most agree she was born in the same year as the arrival of the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railway to the Rio Grande Valley in 1904. In 1910 her family moved to San Antonio, where she received an English education and completed her bachelor of arts degree with a teaching certificate in history and Spanish from Lady of the Lake College. González taught Spanish at Saint Mary’s Hall before attending the University of Texas at Austin, one of the first women of her ethnic class to do so, and she graduated with her master’s degree in history in 1930. In 1925 González met the Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, who revived the Texas Folklore Society in 1922 and encouraged her research into Texas-Mexican folklore. González served as vice president of the Texas Folklore Society in 1928, and as president of the society for two terms, from 1930 to 1932, around the same time she was preparing her master’s thesis under the supervision of the Texas historian Eugene C. Barker. She received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in 1934–1935 to conduct research in South Texas, and she wrote during this year about the ranching customs that were fast declining with modernization. Her publications halted shortly after she married E. E. Mireles in 1935 in San Antonio; they lived in Del Rio for a short time and then settled in Corpus Christi, where they worked as bilingual schoolteachers, members of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and Spanish-language activists. Although González’s publishing career virtually ended after her marriage, recovery efforts over the last two decades have shed light on her unpublished literary accomplishments. Archival evidence and the recovery of her work show that she continued her literary endeavors, and this body of work now forms the core of criticism on Mexican American women writers, southwestern ethnography, and 20th-century regional and ethnic American literature.

Biographies and General Overviews

The Chicana scholar and feminist María E. Cotera has published extensively on González and her contributions to Mexican American literature and South Texas history and folklore. With the launching of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, published out of the University of Houston’s Arte Público Press, scholarly interest in González has grown. Kreneck 1998 provides an overview of the recovery of González’s Caballero: A Historical Novel (coauthored with Eve Raleigh—see González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works) and Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works). Reyna 2000 is a collection of González’s folktales, brought together and published for the first time as a collection by Arte Público Press; the introduction to this collection provides a good overview of González’s life and literature. Rebolledo 1995 situates González within a larger tradition of Mexican American and Chicana literature, and Cotera 2005 and Cotera 2015 offer critical biographies that highlight González’s education and professional achievements. Chase 1992 and Purdy 2000 are literary biographies geared toward newcomers, students, or public intellectuals, while Jurado 2013 offers an intermediate discussion of González’s life and writings. The works by Rebolledo, Reyna, and Cotera will interest the more serious scholar of US Hispanic and Chicana/o literature.

  • Chase, Cida S. “Jovita González de Mireles (1899–1983).” In Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chicano Writers. 2d series. Edited by Franciso A. Lomelí and Carl R. Shirley, 122–126. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.

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    Part of a two-part series on Chicano literature and a useful resource for beginning students and researchers; includes a list of original publications, a biographical sketch, and an overview of the social themes in the listed publications. See also Bibliographies.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Jovita González Mireles: A Sense of History and Homeland.” In Latina Legacies: Identity, Biography, and Community. Edited by Vicki L. Ruiz and Virginia Sánchez Korrol, 158–174. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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    Part of a collection of fifteen narrative biographies of Latinas in history; highlights González’s early life and education, her academic and scholarly achievements and writings as a member and two-time president of the Texas Folklore Society, and her work as a Spanish teacher and advocate of bilingual education.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Jovita González Mireles: Texas Folklorist, Historian, Educator.” In Leaders of the Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays. Edited by Anthony Quiroz, 119–140. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2015.

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    Also part of a collection of biographical essays documenting the history of thirteen activists, educators, and leaders of the Mexican American generation (1920–1965). Provides a fuller discussion of González’s coauthorship with Margaret Eimer (pen name Eve Raleigh) of Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works; see also Critical Approaches to Caballero).

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  • Jurado, Kathy. “‘Have We Not a Mind Like They?’: Jovita González on Nation and Gender.” In Women and Rhetoric between the Wars. Edited by Ann George, M. Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zepernick, 209–222. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013.

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    Offers a biography and rhetorical analysis of González’s master’s thesis, “Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties” (cited as González 2006, under Primary Works), and short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” with attention given to González’s participation in the League of United Latin American Citizens. Available online through subscription.

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  • Kreneck, H. Thomas. “Recovering the ‘Lost’ Manuscripts of Jovita González: The Production of South Texas Mexican-American Literature.” Texas Library Journal 74.2 (1998): 76–79.

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    Tells the story of preserving, recovering, and making accessible González’s unpublished manuscripts Caballero (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works) and Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works). Provides a brief biography of González and a publication history of these works.

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  • Purdy, Andrea R. “Jovita González de Mireles (1904–1983).” In American Women Writers, 1900–1945: A Bio-Bibliographic Critical Sourcebook. Edited by Laurie Champion, 142–146. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

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    Useful reference for beginning students and scholars, with a biography and bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and a discussion of both. See also Bibliographies.

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  • Rebolledo, Tey Diana. Women Singing in the Snow: A Cultural Analysis of Chicana Literature. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

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    The first chapter (“Early Hispana/Mexicana Writers: The Chicana Literary Tradition,” pp. 11–27) identifies and includes González as an early Hispana/Mexicana “foremother” to Chicana literature. Though brief in its appraisal of González’s work, the chapter initiated more in-depth recovery and studies of González.

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  • Reyna, Sergio. “Introduction.” In The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories. By Jovita González. Edited by Sergio Reyna, x–xvii. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 2000.

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    Provides a biography of González’s early life and an overview of her literary works and achievements. Part of the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, each piece in the collection contains a footnote citing the original publication venue or repository where it was recovered. See also Critical Introductions to Recovered Works.

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Archival Collections

The recovery of Jovita González’s life and work is now possible with the archival materials available to the public in the special collections of three Texas university libraries. Although her major, unpublished works have been recovered and published over the last three decades, making them more widely available and accessible to the general public, much archival information remains untapped. Anyone with a serious interest in the topic should consult these collections for their special information pertaining to González’s life, letters, and literature. Most important, however, scholars who want to engage in the work and study of Jovita González must be familiar with her archival holdings. The largest collection is the E. E. Mireles and Jovita González de Mireles Papers at the Special Collections and Archives at the Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi Bell Library. A smaller collection, Jovita González Mireles Papers, resides at the Witliff Collections at Texas State University–San Marcos; and an even smaller, although no less significant, repository, Jovita González Mireles Manuscripts and Works, 1925–1980, is at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the University of Texas at Austin.

Bibliographies

Although there are no extensive bibliographies of González’s work, the following are useful for both beginning students and advanced scholars. José E. Limón edited and published González 1997, a novel compiled from manuscript fragments in the E. E. Mireles and Jovita González de Mireles Papers at the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. (See also Archival Collections and Primary Works.) In addition to bringing the novel to light, Limón appends a bibliography of González’s published works, including the two novels published after her time, the smaller pieces she published in regional journals and presses throughout the 1920s and 1930s, and a handful of reprints published in-between. Chase 1992 is also of interest to both novice and advanced scholars. Part of the Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chicano Writers volume, second series, Chase follows a general format that includes a list of primary sources, a literary biography, and a critical assessment of major genres and themes, Meanwhile, Purdy 2000 is a chapter from a critical sourcebook on American women writers and also follows a general format, with a short biography, an overview of scholarship, and a bibliography of both primary and secondary sources. These three references provide a good window into González’s literary production and relevance.

  • Chase, Cida S. “Jovita González de Mireles (1899–1983).” In Dictionary of Literary Biography: Chicano Writers. 2d series. Edited by Franciso A. Lomelí and Carl R. Shirley, 122–126. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.

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    A list of Jovita González’s major publications, a biographical sketch, and an overview of the social themes in her major literary works. As a reference article, provides a guide to González’s primary works for beginning students and researchers. See also Biographies and General Overviews.

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  • González, Jovita. Dew on the Thorn. Edited by José E. Limón. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1997.

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    Written in the 1930s but published for the first time by the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. Edited and with a critical introduction and appendix of González’s published writings. See also Primary Works.

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  • Purdy, Andrea R. “Jovita González de Mireles (1904–1983).” In American Women Writers, 1900–1945: A Bio-Bibliographic Critical Sourcebook. Edited by Laurie Champion, 142–146. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000.

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    Part of a critical sourcebook, this article offers a brief but thorough literary biography on the topic, an overview of recent scholarship, and a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. Useful for both beginning and intermediate scholars. See also Biographies and General Overviews.

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Primary Works

González published periodically from 1927 to 1940 in the publications of the Texas Folklore Society and in the Southwest Review, but the discovery and recovery of her work since the mid-1990s has made public her unpublished manuscripts from the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Her smaller publications for the Texas Folklore Society and in Southwest Review reflect the growing interest in Texas history and folklore in the early 20th century. J. Frank Dobie revived the Texas Folklore Society in 1922, and he assisted González’s study of and publications on the Texas-Mexican folk while she was pursuing her master’s degree in history at the University of Texas, where Dobie taught in the English Department. González 1927 features her first presentation to the annual conference of the Texas Folklore Society, and many of these folktales appear in González 2000, a collection of folktales and short stories published by the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. “The Bullet-Swallower” is another folktale first presented at the Texas Folklore Society; it was published in a collection edited by Dobie (González 1935), and republished in González 2000. While González’s folktales are often quaint or nostalgic, at least on the surface, her historical research and essays are more incisive and critical of American culture. “America Invades the Border Towns” (González 1930) first appeared in Southwest Review; this essay lays out the sociohistorical conditions of Texas-Mexicans in the late 19th century and into the 20th century. The essay echoes González’s 1930 master’s thesis, “Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties,” which she completed under the direction of Eugene C. Barker. María Eugenia Cotera has since recovered and published the thesis, retitling it Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis (González 2006), with a critical introduction to the author’s life and letters. Another historical essay, “Latin Americans” (González 1937), reflects González’s activism as a bilingual teacher and member of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), an early civil rights group that formed in between the First and Second World Wars and during the Mexican American generation (1920–1965). Perhaps González’s most significant contribution to Mexican American literature and history, however, is Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996), recovered from the E. E. Mireles and Jovita González de Mireles Papers at the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (see Archival Collections) and coedited by José E. Limón and María E. Cotera (see Critical Introductions to Recovered Works). Limón also recovered a second novel, Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a), also from the same papers and, along with “Early Life and Education” (González 1997b), an important autobiographical essay published for the first time in Dew on the Thorn.

  • González, Jovita. “Folklore of the Texas-Mexican Vaquero.” In Texas and Southwestern Lore. Edited by J. Frank Dobie, 7–22. Austin: Texas Folklore Society, 1927.

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    Part of a collection of the annual proceedings of the Texas Folklore Society, where González presented for the first time several folktales that she collected from Mexican cowboys working South Texas ranches where her family owned land and where she spent some of her childhood.

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  • González, Jovita. “America Invades the Border Towns.” Southwest Review 15 (Summer 1930): 469–477.

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    Unlike her folklore, which does much to entertain an Anglo audience interested in Mexican customs and storytelling, this essay provides a critique of American modernization by paying close attention to modernization, class distinctions, and the complex social dynamics of the 20th-century border region.

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  • González, Jovita. “The Bullet-Swallower.” In Puro Mexicano. Edited by J. Frank Dobie, 107–114. Austin: Texas Folklore Society, 1935.

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    Folk story told from the perspective of the title character, who is shot in the mouth by the Texas Rangers during a smuggling expedition. Republished in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories (González 2000) and considered a proto-Chicano narrative about Mexican resistance to Anglo power, although its politics of gender trouble this reading.

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  • González, Jovita. “Latin Americans.” In Our Racial and National Minorities: Their History, Contributions, and Present Problems. Edited by Francis J. Brown and Joseph Slabey Roucek, 497–509. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1937.

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    Written at the height of segregation in South Texas; pays particular attention to the struggle for civil rights carried out by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and makes an argument for the value of Mexican American folklore to American culture.

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  • González, Jovita. Dew on the Thorn. Edited by José E. Limón. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1997a.

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    From an unpublished manuscript at the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi. Opens in 1904, marking the year of the author’s birth and the arrival of the railroad, and combines fiction, history, and folklore to tell about one family’s struggle to adjust to modernization in South Texas. See also Bibliographies.

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  • González, Jovita. “Early Life and Education.” In Dew on the Thorn. By Jovita González. Edited by José Limón, ix–xii. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1997b.

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    Autobiographical sketch included in Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a) and recovered from the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi (see Archival Collections). Limón uses the autobiographical sketch to preface and introduce the narrative, which combines “history, folklore, and her South Texas ‘sense of place’” (p. xv).

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  • González, Jovita. The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories. Edited by Sergio Reyna. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 2000.

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    Collection of short stories, folktales, and oral presentations written or delivered between the 1920s and 1930s; compiled from out-of-print books and the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christi.

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  • González, Jovita. Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis. Edited by María Eugenia Cotera. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

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    González’s (González 1930) master’s thesis, originally titled “Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties,” which begins with a historical background of Mexican settlement in the three South Texas counties and moves into the social life of Texas-Mexicans in the modern era.

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  • González, Jovita, and Eve Raleigh. Caballero: A Historical Novel. Edited by José E. Limón and María E. Cotera. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.

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    Unpublished historical novel coauthored in the 1930s and discovered over fifty years later. Set in Texas during the US-Mexico War (1846–1848), it is a historical romance about Don Santiago Mendoza y Soria, who falls from power as his children fall in love with the invading Americans. See also Critical Approaches to Caballero.

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Secondary Works

Because her work is not overtly political and often reinforces dominant perceptions of Mexicans as a colonized group in Texas, Chicano/a literary criticism was at first ambivalent about González. These debates about her work are what make it a compelling research topic for students and scholars. The recovery efforts of many scholars beginning in the mid-1990s have made the study of González’s work all the more critical. González’s relationship to J. Frank Dobie, who revived the Texas Folklore Society in 1922, and to other influential Anglo men of South Texas has been disconcerting for many scholars who maintain a politics of resistance to dominant culture as the defining characteristic of Mexican American and Chicano/a literature. For others more attuned to feminist concerns and gendered discourses, González’s work demonstrates how resistance often operates in oblique and covert ways, especially when it comes to the dual patriarchal structures of Anglo and Mexican American cultures. This struggle between patriarchies is best illustrated in González’s two previously unpublished manuscripts in the Special Collections and Archives at Texas A&M University–Corpus Christ, which were recovered and published by José E. Limón and María E. Cotera (see Primary Works). Critical approaches to González’s work since that time have flourished. The following list subdivides these sources into categories to reflect the themes and tone of this criticism. The first category includes critical introductions to González’s recovered works; the second focuses specifically on approaches to González’s historical novel Caballero; the third consists of feminist approaches; the fourth includes cultural studies approaches; and the last contains full-length books that contextualize and offer comparative approaches to González’s work.

Critical Introductions to Recovered Works

More books by González have been published after her death than in her lifetime, and the recovery efforts of Texas librarians, historians, and scholars have made these publications possible. With the republication of a historical novel in 1996, a collection of historical sketches in 1997, a collection of short fiction and folktales in 2000, and her master’s thesis in 2006, which she wrote as a history student at the University of Texas at Austin in 1930, González is perhaps more widely read now than she was in her own day (see Primary Works). José E. Limón and María E. Cotera coedited and recovered the coauthored Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works). Limón 1996 positions the novel within a male-oriented tradition of history and ethnography, while Cotera 1996 puts it in line with a feminist tradition of writing. Limón 1997 highlights the themes of Texas history and modernization, marked by the arrival of the railroad in 1904, which coincidentally is the year of González’s birth and the year that opens her second published novel, Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works). The Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project published Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works) and The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories (González 2000, cited under Primary Works). Reyna 2000 provides a general overview of González’s life and literary works, collected from out-of-print books and journals in a comprehensive collection of her folktales and fiction (see Biographies and General Overviews). Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis (González 2006, cited under Primary Works) is the most recent publication to bring attention to González’s work. Cotera 2006 provides a biography and social context for the thesis to highlight how it challenges the rhetoric of domination in 1930s Texas history. From historical fiction to historical prose, the introductions to González’s recovered works provide an entryway into more serious scholarship on the topic.

  • Cotera, María. “Hombres Necios: A Critical Epilogue.” In Caballero: A Historical Novel. By Jovita González and Eve Raleigh. Edited by José E. Limón and María Cotera, 339–346. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.

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    With reference to the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a historical figure and character in González’s short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” the novel’s epilogue ties it to a Chicana feminist literary heritage. Appended to the end of the novel, the epilogue diverges from the co-editor’s introduction.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “A Woman of the Borderlands: ‘Social Life in Cameron, Starr, and Zapata Counties’ and the Origins of Borderlands Discourse.” In Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis by Jovita González. By Jovita González. Edited by María Eugenia Cotera, 3–33. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

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    Positions González within the rhetoric of domination in 20th-century Texas history and ethnography to show how the thesis presents a counter-historical narrative tradition. The thesis offers another paradigm for understanding González’s fiction and ethnographic writings, an argument first made in Cotera 2000. See also Cultural Criticism and Modern Ethnography.

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  • Limón, José E. “Introduction.” In Caballero: A Historical Novel. By Jovita González. Edited by José E. Limón and María Cotera, xii–xvi. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1996.

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    Begins with an overview of the historical conflict in González’s novel, which is set in South Texas during the US-Mexico War (1846–1848); Limón argues that the novel responds to and resolves the contradictions and social conflicts of its own era through historical allegory.

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  • Limón, José E. “Introduction.” In Dew on the Thorn. By Jovita González. Edited by José E. Limón, xv–xviii. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1997.

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    Gives an overview of González’s sense of history, folklore, and place in the context of modernization, and introduces the collection as a set of literary sketches that loosely form a novel about a romance between two families caught in the modern changes of 20th-century South Texas. See also Primary Works.

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  • Reyna, Sergio. “Introduction.” In The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories. By Jovita González. Edited by Sergio Reyna, x–xvii. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 2000.

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    Offers a good primer on how to begin navigating González’s life, writings, and criticism, with a brief biography of her early life, literary works, and their relevance to recent Chicano criticism. See also Biographies and General Overviews.

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Critical Approaches to Caballero

Most of what is written about González’s work focuses on Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works) and its novelistic telling of history. Scholars agree that the novel uses 19th-century Texas history and the US-Mexico War (1846–1848) to stage and resolve racial and gendered conflicts of the modern era, but there is much debate over the novel’s terms of romance and the resolutions it offers to real historical problems. Cotera 1995 precedes the novel’s publication and puts it in line with Chicana feminist thought, especially the discourses of betrayal in its narrative of star-crossed and cross-cultural romances between Anglos and Mexicans in Texas. In Cotera’s later work, the collaboration between González and Raleigh becomes a more significant index of the novel’s feminist consciousness (see Cotera 2007, cited under Feminist Approaches). For Bebout 2015, this collaboration between the two women authors raises the specter of queerness that lingers in the text and its criticism. Bebout 2015 argues that one must approach the novel from the concept of heteropatriarchy, not just patriarchy alone, to unpack the significance of its queer character, Luis Gonzaga. Indeed, much of the most important scholarship on the novel focuses on its critique of patriarchy and nationalism. Limón 1996 adopts Doris Sommer’s work on the Latin American historical romance novel, while González 2002 examines the novel’s terms of patriarchy and nation, which shore up the incomplete project of liberation and modernity for ethnic women and the working class. Tinnemayer 2000 is a comparative analysis of the novel and its discourses of enlightenment and whiteness, while Pérez 2004 and Kaup 2005 focus specifically on the hacienda to provide a deeper understanding of the novel’s historical significance and aesthetics of critique. For Murrah-Mandril 2011, the novel generates a “memory-site” that defies a singular historical perspective, creating a critical sense of time. Though not exhaustive, the scholarship here represents the most formative of the innovative approaches to the novel’s retelling of history.

  • Bebout, Lee. “The First Last Generation: Queer Temporality, Heteropatriarchy, and Cultural Reproduction in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero.” Western American Literature 49.4 (Winter 2015): 351–374.

    DOI: 10.1353/wal.2015.0011Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Drawing on much of the scholarship cited here and focusing on the queer character Luis Gonzaga, the article highlights the novel’s alternative temporality, which both defies patriarchy and forecloses the potential for a queer future, especially in light of the 1930s and within the genre of historical romance.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Deconstructing the Corrido Hero: Caballero and its Gendered Critique of Nationalist Discourse.” In Special Issue: Mexican American Women: Changing Images. Edited by Juan R. García and Thomas Gelsinon. Perspectives in Mexican American Studies 5 (1995): 151–170.

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    One of the earliest assessments of the novel connecting it to Chicana feminism. Rather than revere the Mexican male hero in the border ballad tradition, the novel maps out a critique of nationalism and prefigures Chicana literature, which Cotera reiterates in the novel’s epilogue. Also see Critical Introductions to Recovered Works.

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  • González, John M. “Terms of Engagement: Nation or Patriarchy in Jovita González’s and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero.” In Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. Vol. 4. Edited by José F. Aranda Jr. and Silvio Torres-Saillant, 264–276. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 2002.

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    Identifies four different romance plots to highlight the novel’s critique of nationalism and patriarchy. With attention to the material changes in the South Texas economy and González’s own philosophy on Texas-Mexican culture and history, this chapter shows how the novel inscribes modernity as incomplete, prefiguring the condition of contemporary Chicana/o literature.

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  • Kaup, Monika. “The Unsustainable Hacienda: The Rhetoric of Progress in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero.” Modern Fiction Studies 51.3 (Fall 2005): 561–591.

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    Uses the novel’s coauthorship to argue that it is a “transculturated” text prefiguring Chicana feminism. The novel consciously defies historical facts for historical revision to critique patriarchy and nationalism through the fictional collapse of the hacienda in 19th-century South Texas.

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  • Limón, José E. “Mexicans, Foundational Fictions, and the United States: Caballero, a Late Border Romance.” Modern Language Quarterly: A Journal of Literary History 57.2 (June 1996): 341–353.

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    Argues that Caballero represents the question of national identity at the border, focusing specifically on the romance between Red McLane and María de los Angeles as the novel’s main resolution to 20th-century Anglo-Mexican conflict.

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  • Murrah-Mandril, Erin. “Jovita González and Margaret Eimer’s Caballero as Memory-Site.” Arizona Quarterly: A Journal of American Literature, Culture, and Theory 67.4 (Winter 2011): 135–153.

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    By presenting an overview of current criticism on the novel while also drawing on Pierre Nora’s idea of “memory-site,” the article captures the current state of the field and the thematic relevance of history, cultural memory, and temporality, both in the novel and in contemporary criticism.

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  • Pérez, Vincent. “Remembering the Hacienda: History and Memory in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero: A Historical Novel.” In Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies. Edited by Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn, 471–494. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

    DOI: 10.1215/9780822385776-025Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Offers a South-by-Southwest discussion of Caballero by connecting it to the 1930s plantation novel genre. The comparative approach comes to a better understanding of the dual colonial histories (Spanish and US) of the Southwest, and attends to the equally relevant, reconstructed hacienda tradition in the novel and in the 1930s.

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  • Tinnemayer, Andrea. “Enlightenment Ideology and the Crisis of Whiteness in Francis Berrian and Caballero.” Western American Literature 35.1 (Spring 2000): 21–32.

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    Beginning with an 1826 dime novel and the socialization of Mexican heroines in American ideology, Tinnemayer illustrates the way Caballero both confirms and challenges Anglo-American and European whiteness and the ideology of uplift.

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Feminist Approaches

Although González did not self-identify as a feminist, critical approaches to her work inevitably uncover a more complicated picture of feminism, gender, and Mexican American women. María E. Cotera laid much of the groundwork for feminist analysis, so her work is not only formative but foundational (see Cotera 1995, cited under Critical Approaches to Caballero, and Cotera 1996, cited under Critical Introductions to Recovered Works). However, Velasquez-Treviño 1988a and Velasquez-Treviño 1988b comprise the earliest feminist assessments of González’s Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works). Cotera 2000 unpacks the feminist consciousness in González’s short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” published for the first time in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories (González 2000, cited under Primary Works); and Cotera 2007 looks more closely at the politics of collaboration, gender, and form in Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works). Casellas 2006 is written in Spanish and was originally presented at an international conference in Mexico on the topic of US Hispanic, Chicana, and Mexicana literature. González’s work is especially critical to the politics and aesthetics of transnational and border feminism, as Velasquez-Treviño 1988a and Velasquez-Treviño 1988b demonstrate. Manríquez 2000 provides a rhetorical analysis of Caballero and its gendered tropes of domesticity, while McMahon 2007 attunes to the Spanish-Mexican home in the novel and in the writings of the New Mexican woman writer Cleofas Jaramillo. All of this scholarship unpacks the construction of gender and the politics of domesticity in González’s fiction, and it collectively addresses González’s feminism as an early Mexican American woman writer.

  • Casellas, Milagros López-Peláez. “Dew on the Thorn: Propuesta Feminista de Liberación Chicana.” In Jaén: Cruce de Caminos Encuentro de Culturas. Edited by Juan Fernández Jimémez, Jesús López-Peláez Casella, and Encarnación Medina Arjona, 183–191. Jaén, Spain: Universidad de Jaén, 2006.

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    A feminist approach to González’s Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works), with some reference to Caballero (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works), but primarily a critical appraisal of the second novel’s feminist voice, reiterating how González is a precursor to contemporary Chicana literature.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Engendering a ‘Dialectics of Our America’: Jovita González’s Pluralist Dialogue as Feminist Testmonio.” In Las obreras: Chicana Politics of Work and Family. Edited by Vicki L. Ruiz, 237–256. Los Angeles: UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, 2000.

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    Critical analysis of González’s unpublished short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” which stages a meeting between the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet and the Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Through a combination of critical biography and close textual analysis, Cotera highlights González’s dialogic feminist consciousness and relevance to Chicana literature.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Recovering ‘Our’ History: Caballero and the Gendered Politics of Form.” Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies 32.2 (Fall 2007): 157–171.

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    Looks at the novel’s collaboration and reads Don Santiago Mendoza y Soria’s fall from power through a gendered lens. The novel’s collaboration yields a narrative form that defies the US-Mexico borderlands in the 1930s and sits outside of Chicano literary history as a cross-cultural and feminist literary text.

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  • Manríquez, B. J. “Argument in Narrative: Tropology in Jovita González’s Caballero.” Bilingual Review/La Revista Bilingue 25.2 (May–August 2000): 172–178.

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    Unpacks the novel’s feminist politics through a rhetorical analysis of point of view and narrative incursions, where the authors (González and Raleigh) insert their own critical perspectives of patriarchy, community standards, and women’s free will. Looks more closely at the use of feminine metaphors, personification, and landscape to reveal the novel’s feminist consciousness.

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  • McMahon, Marci R. “Politicizing Spanish-Mexican Domesticity, Redefining Fronteras: Jovita González’s Caballero and Cleofas Jaramillo’s Romance of a Little Village Girl.” In Special Issue: Domestic Frontiers: The Home and Colonization. Edited by Victoria Haskins and Margaret D. Jacobs. Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 28.1–2 (2007): 232–259.

    DOI: 10.1353/fro.2007.0033Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Focusing on the Spanish-Mexican home as a site of resistance and negotiation in two early Mexican American narratives by women, interprets representations of domesticity to demonstrate how the nation and the home inform one another in complicated ways.

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  • Velasquez-Treviño, Gloria. “Cultural Ambivalence in Early Chicana Literature.” In European Perspectives on Hispanic Literature of the United States. Edited by Genevieve Fabre, 140–146. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 1988a.

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    Maintains that cultural ambivalence is an apt paradigm for interpreting the politics of resistance in González’s work. Originally a presentation at the international conference on “Hispanic Cultures and Identities in the United States” held in Paris; one of the first sustained studies of González’s work.

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  • Velasquez-Treviño, Gloria. “Jovita González: Una voz de Resistencia Cultural en la Temprana Narrative Chicana.” In Mujer y Literatura Mexicana y Chicana: Culturas en Contacto. Edited by Aralia Lopez-Gonzalez, Amelia Malagamba, and Elena Urrutia, 77–83. Mexico City: Colegio de la Fronera Norte, 1988b.

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    Argues for a feminist and activist lens to better understand early Chicana literature, with attention to González’s Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works), which was unpublished at the time. In Spanish and first presented at a borderlands conference in Mexico City spotlighting the cross-cultural exchange between Chicana and Mexican women writers.

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Cultural Criticism and Modern Ethnography

González studied and practiced modern ethnography from the 1920s through the 1930s, with guidance from the Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie, who revived the Texas Folklore Society in 1922. González and Dobie met in 1925 on the University of Texas at Austin campus, and they maintained both a personal and professional relationship throughout the 1930s. In addition to serving as vice president (in 1928) and president (from 1930 through 1932) of the Texas Folklore Society, González presented her collected folklore at the annual meetings, much of which is now collected in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories (González 2000, cited under Primary Works). Like Dobie, who practiced a form of ethnography that privileged the literary over the linguistic and humanism over scientific objectivity, González’s collected folktales emphasize storytelling. While her historical writings provide a more assertive politics of ethnic identity, her folktales tend to reproduce the paternalism of her mentor and the Texas Folklore Society, at least on the surface. Limón 1993 uses the idea of repression to better understand González’s politics of resistance, while Cotera 2000 shifts attention to González’s master’s thesis and reframes her ethnographic work from the vantage point of her historical research and writing. Meanwhile, Reyna 2002 takes a folklore perspective to Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works) and Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works), while Ybarra 2009 takes an environmental approach to the folktales and fiction. Ramírez 2009 frames Caballero from the perspective of American eugenics and preservationist discourses about race and nation, while Rivera 2011 looks more closely at González’s linguistic play as a rhetorical act of resistance in her short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” first published in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories. Finally, Vizcaíno-Alemán 2012 looks at a handful of stories from the same collection to unpack the gendered narrative perspectives in González’s ethnographic writings and short fiction.

  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Refiguring the ‘American Congo’: Jovita González, John Gregory Bourke, and the Battle over Ethno-Historical Representations of the Texas-Mexican Border.” Western American Literature 35.1 (Spring 2000): 75–94.

    DOI: 10.1353/wal.2000.0019Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Argues that González’s master’s thesis provides a counter-history to Captain John Gregory Bourke’s 1894 article “The American Congo.” Cotera has since recovered and published the thesis for the first time as Life Along the Border: A Landmark Tejana Thesis (González 2006, cited under Primary Works).

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  • Limón, José E. “Folklore, Gendered Repression, and Cultural Critique: The Case of Jovita González.” In Special Issue: Fluid Boundaries: Essays in Honor of the Life and Work of Joan Lidoff. Edited by Evan Carton. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 35.4 (Winter 1993): 453–473.

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    Introduces the notion of cultural repression to better understand González’s politics of resistance and cultural critique. Positions González within the institutional discourses of the University of Texas at Austin in the 1930s, and especially J. Frank Dobie, who revived the Texas Folklore Society.

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  • Ramírez, Pablo. “Resignifying Preservation: A Borderlands Response to American Eugenics in Jovita González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero.” Canadian Review of American Studies/Revue Canadienne d’Etudes Américaines 39.1 (2009): 21–39.

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    Bilingual in English and French; reads González’s Caballero alongside her published folktales and within the salvage discourses of 20th-century ethnography to better illuminate the novel’s critique of eugenics and racial purity.

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  • Reyna, Sergio. “Jovita González y su Obra Folclórico-Literaria: Recontrucción de la Historia Cultural Méxicano-Americana.” In Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project. Vol. 4. Edited by José F. Aranda Jr. and Silvio Torres-Saillant, 184–200. Houston, TX: Arte Público, 2002.

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    Provides a biographical portrait of González’s life and literature that focuses on the folk aspects of Dew on the Thorn and Caballero. Written in Spanish for a bilingual reader.

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  • Rivera, Díana Noreen. “Reconsidering Jovita González’s Life, Letters, and Pre-1935 Folkloric Production: A Proto-Chicana’s Conscious Revolt against Anglo American Academic Patriarchy via Linguistic Performance.” Chicana/Latina Studies: The Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social 10.2 (Spring 2011): 46–91.

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    Begins with an overview of the scholarship before revisiting the short story “Shades of the Tenth Muses,” first published in The Woman Who Lost Her Soul and Other Stories (González 2000, cited under Primary Works). Argues for a more nuanced reading of the story’s linguistic play.

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  • Vizcaíno-Alemán, Melina. “Rethinking Jovita González’s Work: Bio-Ethnography and Her South Texas Regionalism.” Southwestern American Literature 37.2 (Spring 2012): 38–47.

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    Posits the idea of bio-ethnography to analyze González’s short fiction, which reimagines her own place in the Texas-Mexican community and folklore tradition.

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  • Ybarra, Priscilla. “Borderlands as Bio-Region: Jovita González, Gloria Anzaldúa, and the Twentieth-Century Ecological Revolution in the Rio Grande Valley.” MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 34.2 (Summer 2009): 175–189.

    DOI: 10.1353/mel.0.0029Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Connects González’s folklore to Gloria Anzaldúa’s borderlands theory to rethink environmental studies and Chicana/o literature. Makes an argument for the bioregion to link issues of ecology to culture and language in González’s folktales.

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Contextual Studies

There are no full-length books or biographies about González, but there are several monographs that devote chapters to her social life, ethnographic practices, and literary works. These sources contextualize González within specialized discussions of US-Mexico relations, South Texas regionalism, and the politics of Mexican American and Chicano/a literature. Limón 1994 is a book about the formation of modern ethnography in South Texas, and it includes a chapter on González in the context of her mentor, J. Frank Dobie, and the history of Texas-Mexican folklore at the University of Texas at Austin. Garza-Falcon 1998 is a book about the Mexican American responses to 20th-century discourses of dominance in Texas, with González’s life and literature offering a paradigm for understanding how Mexican American writers respond to this rhetoric. Cotera 2008 is a critical, comparative biography of three ethnic women writers of the early 20th century, with González the subject of two chapters, one specifically on Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works). Pérez 2006 also devotes a chapter to Caballero in a comparative study of the hacienda in Mexican American literature. González 2009 is a study of the Texas centennial celebration from a Mexican American perspective, and it offers one chapter on González’s work with the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), with some discussion of Caballero. Rodríguez 2010 looks at Anglo, Mexican, and Mexican American narratives of the US-Mexico War and focuses specifically on Caballero in the last chapter, while Guidotti-Hernández 2011 takes a more critical approach to González’s fictional representations of historical violence against women and indigenous people. Meanwhile, Roybal 2017 is a study of Mexican American women and land from 1848 to 1960, with one chapter in particular recounting González’s female sense of place in Caballero and “Shades of the Tenth Muses.”

  • Cotera, María Eugenia. Native Speakers: Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, Jovita González, and the Poetics of Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008.

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    Comparative study of three women writers, in two separate chapters—one dealing with their lives, and the other analyzing their writings. The first chapter on González discusses her relationship to South Texas ethnography (pp. 103–132), while the second focuses on Caballero (pp. 199–224).

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  • Garza-Falcon, Leticia. Gente Decente: A Borderlands Response to the Rhetoric of Dominance. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

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    The notion of “gente decente,” or the descendants of Spanish colonizers of Texas, structures this book’s understanding of South Texas Mexican American writers, with one chapter (pp. 74–132) focusing specifically on González’s historical fiction.

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  • González, John Morán. Border Renaissance: The Texas Centennial and the Emergence of Mexican American Literature. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009.

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    Presents a cultural history of LULAC within the context of the Texas centennial celebration, which took place in 1936 and paralleled the founding of LULAC in 1929. The final chapter (pp. 157–192) focuses on LULAC women and uses González as a case study.

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  • Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole M. Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginations. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011.

    DOI: 10.1215/9780822394495Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

    Study of US and Mexican narratives of nationhood, race, and gender, with one chapter (pp. 133–170) focusing on the theme of death in González’s supernatural sketches from Dew on the Thorn to gauge the significance of racial and gendered violence in Mexican American history and literature.

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  • Limón, José E. Dancing with the Devil: Society and Cultural Poetics in Mexican-American South Texas. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.

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    First half of this book traces the development of South Texas ethnographic discourses through four chapters, which offer critical biographies of key individuals, including a chapter (pp. 60–75) on González and the significance of her ethnographic work from the perspective of “imbedded” resistance.

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  • Pérez, Vincent. Remembering the Hacienda: History and Memory in the Mexican American Southwest. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.

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    Explores the literary connection between the South and the Southwest by focusing specifically on the similarities between hacienda literature and plantation literature. One chapter focuses on González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero: A Historical Novel (pp. 93–113).

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  • Rodríguez, Jaime Javier. The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War: Narrative, Time, and Identity. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010.

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    A book about narratives of the US-Mexico War (1846–1848), from American dime novels written and published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to Mexican American narratives like González and Eve Raleigh’s Caballero.

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  • Roybal, Karen R. Archives of Dispossession: Recovering the Testimonios of Mexican American Herederas, 1848–1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

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    Study of women, land, and the recovery of women’s voices through the testimonio (oral testimony) from various archival collections across the Southwest and in the literature of three Mexican American women; one chapter focuses on González (pp. 70–100).

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Dissertations

Jovita González continues to be a topic of considerable study and discussion, as the steady production of dissertations on her work attests. Cotera 2001 is a comparative study of González and the Native American woman writer Ella Cara Deloria, and it laid the ground for Cotera 2008 (cited under Contextual Studies), a monograph study of González, Deloria, and the African American woman writer Zora Neale Hurston. Casellas 2003 focuses on González’s importance to Chicana feminism and her recovered novel, Dew on the Thorn (González 1997a, cited under Primary Works). López 2004 considers González alongside two other border women writers in a comparative, feminist study; Borgia 2009 follows a similar comparative structure but expands the geographical range from New York to Mexico City. Garza 2012 and Romero 2013 also deploy comparative analyses of González alongside Mexican American women writers and activists, with Garza focusing on South Texas women and border themes and Romero focusing on the gothic and sentimental genres. Meanwhile, Ramírez 2003 presents González within a wider range of Mexican American literature to argue for a “borderlands ethics” spanning the late 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, Murrah-Mandril 2014 spans a similar time period to study the theme of time, with one chapter on Caballero: A Historical Novel (González and Raleigh 1996, cited under Primary Works).

  • Borgia, Danielle. “Specters of the Woman Author: The Haunted Fictions of Anglo-American, Mexican-American, and Mexican Women.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009.

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    Focuses on theme of haunting and the trope of ghosts to bring together the work of New Yorker Edith Wharton, González, and Mexican writer Amparo Dávila. Argues that ghosts and haunting represent a clash with patriarchy and the struggle to identify as female in the United States, South Texas, and Mexico.

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  • Casellas, Milagros López-Peláez. “Jovita González’s Dew on the Thorn: A Chicana Response to Patriarchy.” PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2003.

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    Mostly in Spanish and in dialogue with Chicano/a literary and US postcolonial studies. Explores the feminist and counter-historical value of González’s novel, first published in 1997 but written in the 1930s.

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  • Cotera, María Eugenia. “Native Speakers: Locating Early Expressions of U.S. Third World Feminist Discourse: A Comparative Analysis to the Ethnographic and Literary Writing of Ella Cara Deloria and Jovita González.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 2001.

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    Part biography and part literary criticism, this comparative discussion accounts for the ways González and Yankton Sioux woman Deloria use fiction to challenge the establishment and establish a trajectory of US women of color writers.

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  • Garza, Laura Patricia. “Jovita González, Adela Vento y Consuelo Aldape de Vega Hidalgo: Precursoras del pensamiento fronterizo.” PhD diss., University of Houston, 2012.

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    Composed in Spanish, this dissertation focuses on the writings of three women from the Rio Grande Valley border zone. It takes a regional approach to recenter discussions of literature and the feminine, and to illustrate how all three women prefigure Chicana borderlands literature.

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  • López, Shirley. “Remembering the Brave Women: Chicana Literature on the Texas-Mexico Border, 1900–1950.” PhD diss., University of Iowa, 2004.

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    Focuses on the region of Laredo, Texas, to uncover the formative voices of Leonor Villegas de Magnón, González, and Josephina Niggli. Addresses the recovery of these early-20th-century women writers and argues they represent a silent history of Chicana literature in the Chicano canon.

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  • Murrah-Mandril, Erin. “Out of Time: Temporal Colonization and the Writing of Mexican American Subjectivity.” PhD diss., University of New Mexico, 2014.

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    Traces the significance of time to Mexican Americans, beginning with Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the US-Mexico War (1846–1848). Includes a chapter (pp. 101–136) on María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Miguel A. Otero, González, and Adina de Zavala.

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  • Ramírez, Pablo Alfonso. “Borderlands Ethics: Visons of Incorporation in Chicana/o Fiction.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2003.

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    Takes both a thematic and historical approach to trace the ethical response to history and social injustice in Mexican American literature. Begins with the 19th-century novelist María Amparo Ruiz de Burton and follows up with a chapter on Caballero (pp. 69–106) before considering the contemporary period.

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  • Romero, Wanalee Ocasia. “Gothic Sentimental and Early Mexican American Women Writers.” PhD diss., Northwestern University, 2013.

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    Also a comparative study of three early-20th-century Mexican American women writers whose work deploys the Anglo-American genres of gothic and sentimental fiction. One chapter focuses on María Cristina Mena, another on Josephina Niggli, and the last chapter is on González’s Caballero (pp. 120–162).

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