Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory: A Novel

by Emma Pérez

Overview

Runner-up, Best Historical Fiction in English, Latino Book Awards Competition, 2010

This literary adventure takes place in nineteenth-century Texas and follows the story of a Tejana lesbian cowgirl after the fall of the Alamo. Micaela Campos, the central character, witnesses the violence against Mexicans, African Americans, and indigenous peoples after the infamous battles of the Alamo and of San Jacinto, both in 1836. Resisting an easy opposition between good versus evil and brown versus white characters, the novel also features Micaela's Mexican-Anglo cousin who assists and hinders her progress. Micaela's travels give us a new portrayal of the American West, populated by people of mixed races who are vexed by the collision of cultures and politics. Ultimately, Micaela's journey and her romance with a black/American Indian woman teach her that there are no easy solutions to the injustices that birthed the Texas Republic.

This novel is an intervention in queer history and fiction with its love story between two women of color in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. Pérez also shows how a colonial past still haunts our nation's imagination. The battles of the Alamo and San Jacinto offered freedom and liberty to Texans, but what is often erased from the story is that common people who were Mexican, Indian, and Black did not necessarily benefit from the influx of so many Anglo immigrants to Texas. The social themes and identity issues that Pérez explores—political climate, debates over immigration, and historical revision of the American West—are current today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292721289
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Series:	Chicana Matters
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	613,976
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Emma Pérez is Associate Professor and Chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is the author of The Decolonial Imaginary: Writing Chicanas into History and the novel Gulf Dreams.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Chapter 13
• Chapter 14
• Chapter 15
• Chapter 16
• Chapter 17
• Chapter 18
• Chapter 19
• Chapter 20
• Chapter 21
• Chapter 22
• Chapter 23
• Chapter 24
• Chapter 25
• Chapter 26
• Chapter 27
• Chapter 28
• Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what's going to happen at the end—but you're wrong.

The Gay & Lesbian Review

Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what's going to happen at the end--but you're wrong.-- "The Gay & Lesbian Review" (5/1/2010 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

Filled with lush beauty, harshness, and horrifying brutality, this is one of those books in which you just KNOW what's going to happen at the end--but you're wrong.

The Gay & Lesbian Review - Terri Schlichenmeyer