Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest

by Ann V. Millard and Jorge Chapa

Book Overview

The sudden influx of significant numbers of Latinos to the rural Midwest stems from the recruitment of workers by food processing plants and small factories springing up in rural areas. Mostly they work at back-breaking jobs that local residents are not willing to take because of the low wages and few benefits. The region has become the scene of dramatic change involving major issues facing our country--the intertwining of ethnic differences, prejudice,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0292705689
• ISBN13: 9780292705685
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

"The Human Face of Latino Migration En Pocos Palabras"

Truth, it has been said, can set a person free. But can such truth, once brought to light, change (or in this case, reaffirm) our perception of a region or a nation? The stark reality of life for Latino immigrants in the mythological American Heartland is revealed, in all of its too often mischaracterized and unromantic glory, in Apple Pie and Enchiladas: Latino Newcomers in the Rural Midwest (2004) by Ann V. Millard and Jorge Chapa. Featuring collaborations among and between a large team of authors including Millard, Chapa, Eileen Diaz McConnell, Catalina Burillo, Rogelio Saenz, Refugio I. Rochín, Maríalena D. Jefferds,, Ken R. Crane, and Isidore Flores, this sobering text presents a historical and contemporary examination of the lives and experiences of Latinos in the region known as the Middle West. An opening photo essay allows the reader to visually locate Latinos in rural, rather than urban, spaces; openly and unabashedly suggesting the importance, relevance, and existence of Latino individuals and communities within areas believed to be one-hundred percent "white" in four Midwestern states: Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Nebraska. The essays that follow are interdisciplinary snapshots of Latino life; topics include history, demographics, qualitative methodologies, prejudice, institutional discrimination, jobs in food processing, high school students, churches, policy and community studies. We have access to survey questions, an interview guide used during the study, and an essay on community studies methodologies. Millard and Chapas choice of a food metaphor, "apple pie and enchiladas," to describe what they see as "a new combination in the dynamic contemporary encounter of peoples and cultures," is apt as well as accurate. (p. 1) Latino life, we come to learn, does not begin and end at the Mexican restaurant (a frequent, yet stereotypical, point of access for "anglos" into the vibrant nuances of Latino culture). The text successfully weaves quantitative and qualitative data together in a rich fabric; texturally dense yet vibrantly illuminated with the lived experiences, and more importantly, the voices themselves, of a group that occupies a liminal space within the larger demographic that populates the Midwest. Easily the greatest strength of this text is its reliance upon Latino voice and the way it uses this voice to document and exemplify the life experiences of people like "Sofia, a Latina working in a food processing plant in Fall County, Michigan," or "Ruben, a Latino newcomer in Wheelerton, Indiana." (pp. 125, 111). By merging the voices of their informants with small offerings from their field notes, this text represents what is exceptional about ethnography from the inside; this is insiders studying insiders and the results are remarkably fabulous. Nor is the text limited in terms of age, social class or gender; women and men are equally represented, social class, networks, and relations are discussed, and emphasis is placed upon ex