Hispanic Heritage 2025 (My booklist on Tejano, Chicano, Mexican American literature)
What a change in space and time right now. I'm writing to you after a brutal but grateful final ecliptic season of this astrological year. Never have the words from the Temple in Delphi meant so much to me ,"Know Thyself". And, as the wheel of the year turns, as my oldest nephews' wedding gets closer, and as I watch my years behind me and anticipate those ahead of me, I find it a struggle to stay centered, balanced, to "be here, right now" (Baba Ram Das' friendly reminder floods my mind)
As we enter the darker half of the year, I am called to collect artifacts of my culture, and heritage and to display in a more predominant light the lived narratives of many South Texas, Tejano and Texan Mexican identities. It is through their written work, through words and visual art, through performance and lore, and most importantly their oral storytelling traditions that cultivate the Mexican American diaspora of the Tejano-Mexican-American duality. This is important because in culture that prioritizes your credentials (on almost anything) over tradition, heritage and intuition, these voices would be lost, and the qualitative research (the interviewing) would also be lost, thus losing our rich tapestry of folk magick, customs, traditions, heritage and ancestral stories.
I hope you enjoy the following selection of lesser known voices on Curanderismo, American Southwest Supernatural Phenomenon, Mexican Witchcraft, Brujerismo and the 'Magical Realism' that exists from growing up between two different cultures that shaped our identities, daily life and are sealed across generations of lore, narratives, stories, songs, healings, recipes, and platicas (heart to hearts) within our shared identity.
🍂🌽 Bless Me Ultima - Rudolfo Anaya
🍂🌽 Gemini Gospel - Bianca Alyssa Perez (A Local Poeta from our South Texas borderlands)
🍂🌽 House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros
🍂🌽 Rain of Gold - Victor Villasenor
🍂🌽 Curandero Conversations 'El Niño Fidencio, Shamanism and Healing Traditions of the Borderlands' - Antonio Zavala
🍂🌽 Curandero 'A Life in Mexican Folk Healing' - Eliseo Torres
🍂🌽 Witchcraft of the Southwest - Marc Simmons **
🍂🌽 Tejano Folk Arts and Crafts in South Texas: Artesanía Tejana - Joe Graham **
🍂🌽 Art among Us: Mexican American Folk Art of San Antonio - Pat Jasper **
🍂🌽 Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza - Gloria Anzaldua
🍂🌽 Por la Raza, Para la Raza: Jovita Idar and Progressive-Era Mexicana Maternalism along the Texas–Mexico Border - Southwestern Historical Quarterly
🍂🌽 Brief Biography of Jovita Idar , please copy the following link www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/jovita-idar
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