Book Project - Day 8 - The Woman in the Zoot Suit

New Acquisition: The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism and the Cultural Politics of Memory by Catherine S. Ramirez

I work at a newspaper (not in any illustrious position, mind you) and although we no longer have a book editor or any regularly featured book review column we still receive quite a few books from publishers. Sometimes we also receive other media items such as CDs and even video games. Upon arriving these items are delivered to the editorial dept assistant. These she would either give away immediately or she would leave them at the lunch room table as fair game.

I have taken home quite a few of these free books – sometimes I snagged them from the lunch room and sometimes one of the advertising rep, who is friendly with the editorial assistant and often would receive books directly from her, would end up giving me the books she had received.

Yesterday there was a small pile of books on the lunch room table. Two of them were in Spanish, one was a photo book on dolphins, and there were a few others which I don’t remember. Only one struck my fancy and I took it.

I haven’t started reading it yet, but it seems like a good blend of LA history, subcultural study as well as gender study.



The zoot suit, a snazzy style of suit with baggy pants, was a popular attire among the Mexican pachucos of Los Angeles. Their female pachuca counterparts had their own style, but often wore the baggy pants (as in the book’s cover) or the same style of suit as the men. But while the pachucos have been the subject of studies, books, art and film, not much has been said of the experiences of the female pachucas or their place within the subculture. According to the publisher’s note, this book is the first to attempt to do so.

According to Duke University Press, the publisher:

“Catherine S. Ramírez draws on interviews she conducted with Mexican American women who came of age in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s as she recovers the neglected stories of pachucas. Investigating their relative absence in scholarly and artistic works, she argues that both wartime U.S. culture and the Chicano movement rejected pachucas because they threatened traditional gender roles. Ramírez reveals how pachucas challenged dominant notions of Mexican American and Chicano identity, how feminists have reinterpreted la pachuca, and how attention to an overlooked figure can disclose much about history making, nationalism, and resistant identities.”

Like I said – sounds like an interesting book. A glimpse of Los Angeles in the 30s-50s, a look at the zoot suit subculture and the Pachuca women who challenged dominant gender identities, and a study of resistance all around. Can’t wait to crack it. I'll share my opinion when I do.

P.S.:
I hope this doesn’t offend anybody…but flipping through the books and looking at the pictures I noticed a striking similarity between the Pachuca style and the styles sported by the Hispanic girls and cholas I went to high school with. Coming from Indonesia at 15, this was my first glimpse of this style – the extremely curled and crunchy bangs, the super-thin drawn eyebrow, the black-lined lips, the big hair at the crown - and they puzzled me (nobody in high school looked like that in 21 Jump Street). Now I see that it has a long history.