White Shadows

[light shelfwear, one-time owner's indecipherable signature on front endpaper; the jacket is sun-browned at the edges, with tiny paper loss at the spine ends, a couple of tiny chips and a diagonal crease at the top of the rear panel]. This "hard hitting, stimulating novel which tackles one of America's most immediate and vexing problems, the struggle of the Mexican-born to acquire the full status and dignity of citizenship" was one of the earliest American novels to center around the legal status of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. It involves a moderately successful Mexican farmer who runs afoul of some powerful landowners, and is forced to smuggle his family across the border, "into America, the fabulous land of freedom, school and jobs." The reality is less enchanting: after an initial stint working in for a copper mining outfit in El Paso, he moves on "to the labor-hungry fields and vineyards of California," eventually settling with some success into "a gulleyside community on the fringe of Los Angeles" (which seems to be situated around East L.A., but for all intents and purposes sounds like Chavez Ravine).

Product Info

Publisher: Reynal & Hitchcock

Year: (c.1947)

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

First Edition

Seller Info

ReadInk

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Country: United States