Chicana Traditions: Continuity and Change

Chicana Traditions features essays from professionals engaged with a broad and ever-expanding Chicana expressive culture. Professors and students, performing artists and folklorists, and archivists and activists merge personal experience with formal discussion to share fascinating inside stories. The topics include a professional woman mariachi performer; the creation and evolution of the escaramuza charra (all-female precision riding team) within the male-dominated Mexican rodeo; the ranchera music of the transnational performer Lydia Mendoza, the complex crossover of Selena's Tejano music, and the bottle cap and jar lid art of Goldie Garcia.

An eye-opening journey through a borderland where cultures and identities converge, Chicana Traditions reveals how Chicanas continue to invent, reshape, and transcend their traditional culture.