Reviewed by:

• Reading, Writing, and Revolution: Escuelitas and the Emergence of a Mexican American Identity in Texas by Philis Barragán Goetz
• Guadalupe San Miguel

Since the late 1970s, historians have documented the complex relationship between Mexican-origin individuals and public schools. Few of these studies, however, have explored the variety of learning opportunities provided by informal institutions such as the family or by formal ones like the Catholic Church, Protestant denominations, and private individuals, especially Mexican Americans themselves. Philis M. Barragán Goetz addresses one of the major gaps in this field by focusing on the widespread existence of Mexican-sponsored private schools in Texas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and on the important roles they played in the community.

Barragán Goetz provides a fascinating history of these escuelitas, or little schools, by focusing on the various binational political, economic, and cultural factors that influenced their rise and decline in South Texas from the late 1800s to the 1940s. She notes that the history of escuelitas was not only one of resistance but also of negotiation, female leadership in patriarchal communities, and responses by Mexican-origin communities as they transformed their identities from Mexican to Mexican American.

Reading, Writing, and Revolution is divided into five largely chronological chapters. The first focuses on the impact that both modernization and progressivism had on the history of escuelitas and on public education from the mid-1800s to the early twentieth century, on community debates over their existence in a modern Texas, and on the formation of one of the best-known escuelitas in Texas, the Colegio Altamirano. Chapter 2 discusses two issues, the Mexican consulate's investigation of Mexican-origin children's exclusion from school in the Laredo area and the campaign by Texas Mexicans to pressure the consulate to investigate more counties in [End Page 364] South an Central Texas and additional forms of mistreatment. Chapter 3 examines the lives of four exceptional teachers who used children and escuelitas to "negotiate and contest the dislocating phenomena taking place on both sides of the border" (16). Chapter 4 discusses the Mexican government's role in supporting the creation of additional escuelitas in the United States in the mid-1920s and their eventual decline several years later. The final chapter examines the influence that escuelitas had on the activism of the Mexican American Generation activists who fought for civil and educational rights between 1930 and 1960.

Barragán Goetz does an excellent job of documenting the existence of escuelitas in the context of public school development, Mexican nation-building pressures, and Mexican-origin community developments. A few basic concepts, however, such as childhood literacy and imaginary citizenship, remain inadequately clarified or substantiated. Similarly, the author's description of these schools as in constant decline—after the rise of public schooling in the late 1880s, after the Mexican consulate quit supporting them in the late 1920s, and after Mexican American Generation activists emerged in the 1930s—is baffling. The evidence indicates that escuelitas were not in constant decline but rather thrived continuously throughong the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Despite these concerns, this book is a major contribution to the historiography of Mexican American education in the United States and lays the groundwork for additional work on the origins and development of community-based schooling in Chicanx history. This book will appeal to anyone interested in educational and social history, Chicana history, ethnic/Latino studies, border studies, and foundational studies in schools of education.

审核人：

• 阅读，写作和革命：Escuelitas和墨西哥裔美国人的身份在得克萨斯州的兴起由PHILIS巴拉戈茨
• 瓜达卢佩圣米格尔（Guadalupe San Miguel）

自1970年代后期以来，历史学家记录了墨西哥裔个人与公立学校之间的复杂关系。然而，这些研究很少探讨家庭等非正式机构或天主教，新教教派和私人（尤其是墨西哥裔美国人）等正规机构提供的各种学习机会。Philis M.BarragánGoetz通过关注19世纪末至20世纪初墨西哥赞助的私立学校在得克萨斯州的普遍存在及其在社区中发挥的重要作用，解决了这一领域的主要差距之一。

BarragánGoetz通过关注影响1800年代末至1940年代在南德克萨斯州兴衰的各种双边政治，经济和文化因素，为这些escuelitas（或小学校）提供了令人着迷的历史。她指出，escuelitas的历史不仅是反抗的历史，而且还是谈判，父权制社区中女性领导地位以及墨西哥裔社区在将身份从墨西哥裔转变为墨西哥裔美国人时的回应之一。

阅读，写作和革命分为五个主要按时间顺序排列的章节。第一个重点是现代化和进步主义对escuelitas的历史以及从1800年代中期到20世纪初的公共教育的影响，关于社区在现代得克萨斯州的存在的辩论，以及对其中一个的形成的影响。得克萨斯州最著名的escuelitas，即Colegio Altamirano。第2章讨论了两个问题，墨西哥领事馆对拉雷多地区墨西哥裔儿童被学校排斥的调查，以及得克萨斯州墨西哥人发起的向该领事馆施压的运动，要求其在[End Page 364]中调查更多县。南德克萨斯中南部和其他形式的虐待。第三章考察了四位杰出的老师的生活，他们利用孩子和守旧派来“谈判和对抗边界两侧发生的流离失所现象”（16）。第4章讨论了墨西哥政府在支持1920年代中期在美国创建新​​的escuelitas的作用以及几年后最终衰落的作用。最后一章探讨了escuelitas对1930年至1960年之间为争取公民和教育权而奋斗的墨西哥裔美国人一代活动家的行动主义的影响。

BarragánGoetz在记录公立学校发展，墨西哥建国压力和墨西哥原住民社区发展情况下的教育存在方面做得非常出色。但是，一些基本概念，例如儿童扫盲和想象中的公民身份，仍未得到充分澄清或证实。同样，作者对这些学校的描述在不断减少中-1880年代末公立学校的兴起，墨西哥领事馆在1920年代末放弃对这些学校的支持以及1930年代墨裔美国人一代活动家出现后-令人困惑。证据表明，在过去的19世纪和20世纪，随行侍不是持续下降，而是不断繁荣。

尽管存在这些担忧，这本书还是对美国墨西哥裔美国人教育史学的重大贡献，并为进一步研究Chicanx历史上基于社区的教育的起源和发展奠定了基础。这本书将吸引对教育和社会历史，奇卡纳历史，种族/拉丁美洲研究，边境研究以及教育学校基础研究感兴趣的任何人。