Memorias de mi viaje Recollections of My Trip

Description

This collection of letters from a young Mexican girl to her aunt was originally published in 1918 in "El Paso del Norte," a newspaper established by and for Mexicans fleeing the turbulence of the revolution. Presented here in a bilingual format, young Olga's observations on her family's trip from Mexico City to Texas are revealing and amusing. We see children allowed to play on the grass in a Houston park, sea bathers in Galveston, and houses in El Paso built on land taken from the Rio Grande--from Mexico, as Olga reminds us. "Memorias de mi viaje," is one of the few accounts of the early twentieth-century Southwest told from the point of view of an upper-class female observer. Its outsider's view of the growing cities in the Southwest, American technology, race relations, and linguistic change is valuable to our understanding of border culture and especially the experiences of women. Extending our knowledge of Mexicana/Chicana writers back in time, it will be a vital document in the combined literary history of Mexico and the United States.