2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred more than a third of Mexico’s territory to the United States, deferred full U.S. citizenship for Mexican Americans but promised, “in the mean time,� to protect their property and liberty. Erin Murrah-Mandril demonstrates that the U.S. government deployed a colonization of time in the Southwest to insure political and economic underdevelopment in the region and to justify excluding Mexican Americans from narratives of U.S. progress. With In the Mean Time, Murrah-Mandril contends that Mexican American authors challenged modern conceptions of empty, homogeneous, linear, and progressive time to contest U.S. colonization. Taking a cue from Latina/o and borderlands spatial theories, Murrah-Mandril argues that time, like space, is a socially constructed, ideologically charged medium of power in the Southwest. In the Mean Time draws on literature, autobiography, political documents, and historical narratives composed between 1870 and 1940 to examine the way U.S. colonization altered time in the borderlands. Rather than reinforce the colonial time structure, early Mexican American authors exploited the internal contradictions of Manifest Destiny and U.S. progress to resist domination and situate themselves within the shifting political, economic, and historical present. Read as decolonial narratives, the Mexican American cultural productions examined in this book also offer a new way of understanding Latina/o literary history.  

2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which transferred more than a third of Mexico's territory to the United States, deferred full U.S. citizenship for Mexican Americans but promised, "in the mean time," to protect their property and liberty. Erin Murrah-Mandril demonstrates that the U.S. government deployed a colonization of time in the Southwest to insure political and economic underdevelopment in the region and to justify excluding Mexican Americans from narratives of U.S. progress. In In the Mean Time, Murrah-Mandril contends that Mexican American authors challenged modern conceptions of empty, homogenous, linear, and progressive time to contest U.S. colonization. Taking a cue from Latina/o and borderlands spatial theories, Murrah-Mandril argues that time, like space, is a socially constructed, ideologically charged medium of power in the Southwest. In the Mean Time draws on literature, autobiography, political documents, and historical narratives composed between 1870 and 1940 to examine the way U.S. colonization altered time in the borderlands. Rather than reinforce the colonial time structure, early Mexican American authors exploited the internal contradictions of Manifest Destiny and U.S. progress to resist domination and situate themselves within the shifting political, economic, and historical present. Read as decolonial narratives, the Mexican American cultural productions examined in this book also offer a new way of understanding Latina/o literary history.

"FRAGMENTS" has several musical influences. As you read through its pages, my love for music will jump out of several poems. The intersection of my writing and musical lyrics really gives this work a very unique voice. Songs for all of us bring back a flood of memories. These unique pieces were meant to merge your memories with my voice to maximize the effect of the poem and the context in which I chose to use the lyrics. ."So instead of looking for what a brother has, Concentrate on his potential; focus on what You can build together, even in stormy weather, Which poses a question, "Can you stand the rain?" I guess you answered that when you decided to leave. Told me I was missing the picture. On the contrary, I was missing from your picture. The pick-ax on your shoulder should have clued me in when I met cha, and you wonder why they call you bitch, I bet cha."