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Author Orozco, José, author

Title Receive our memories : the letters of Luz Moreno, 1950-1952 / José Orozco
Published New York City : Oxford University Press, [2016]

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Description 1 online resource
Contents The Morenos of San Miguel el Alto -- "Follow your path my beloved children, go in peace": on saying goodbye and keeping in contact -- "Humanity cries tears of blood": on religion, epistles, and the end of the world -- "El miserable pueblo" : on being poor and knowing it -- "Newspapers are liars": on the importance of reading and writing -- "The anxieties of an old man are very sad": on being old and preparing to die -- Afterword
Summary "Receive our Memories is a rare study of an epistolary relationship for individuals whose migration from Mexico has been looked at en masse, but not from such a personal and human angle. The heart of the book consists of eighty translated and edited versions of letters from Luz Moreno, a poor, uneducated Mexican sharecropper, to his daughter, a recent émigré to California, in the 1950s. These are contextualized and framed in light of immigration and labor history, the histories of Mexico and the United States in this period, and family history. Although Moreno's letters include many of the affective concerns and quotidian subject matter that are the heart and soul of most immigrant correspondence, they also reveal his deep attachment to a wider world that he has never seen. They include extensive discussions on the political events of his day (the Cold War, the Korean War, the atomic bomb, the conflict between Truman and MacArthur), ruminations on culture and religion (the role of Catholicism in the modern world, the dangers of Protestantism to Mexican immigrants to the United States), and extensive deliberations on the philosophical questions that would naturally preoccupy the mind of an elderly and sick man: Is life worth living? What is death? Will I be rewarded or punished in death? What does it mean to live a moral life? The thoughtfulness of Moreno's meditations and quantity of letters he penned, provide historians with the rare privilege of reading a part of the Mexican national narrative that, as Mexican author Elena Poniatowska notes, is usually "written daily, and daily erased."--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Moreno, Luz, 1877-1953 -- Correspondence
Moreno family.
Moreno Rivera, Francisca, 1901-2002 -- Correspondence
Moreno family
Moreno Rivera, Francisca, 1901-2002
Mexican American families -- Correspondence
Fathers and daughters -- Correspondence
Sharecroppers -- Mexico -- San Miguel el Alto -- Biography
Synarchism -- Mexico
Poor -- Mexico -- Correspondence
Poor -- Mexico -- Attitudes
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Social Scientists & Psychologists.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture.
Fathers and daughters
Manners and customs
Mexican American families
Poor
Poor -- Attitudes
Sharecroppers
Synarchism
San Miguel el Alto (Mexico) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
Mexico
Mexico -- San Miguel el Alto
Genre/Form Biographies
Personal correspondence
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2016047158
ISBN 9780199340446
0199340447
Other Titles Letters of Luz Moreno, 1950-1952