Mongrels, bastards, orphans, and vagabonds : Mexican immigration and the future of race in America
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 265-304) and index.

Wide-ranging and provocative, this book offers an unprecedented account of the long-term cultural and political influences that Mexican Americans will have on the collective character of our nation. In considering the largest immigrant group in American history, Gregory Rodriguez examines the complexities of its heritage and of the racial and cultural synthesis--mestizaje--that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Rodriguez delineates the effects of mestizaje throughout the centuries, traces the northern movement of this "mongrelization," explores the emergence of a new Mexican American identity in the 1930s, and analyzes the birth and death of the Chicano movement. Vis-à-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, he persuasively argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration into the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation.--From publisher description.