Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860–1919 by Jane E. Simonsen (review)

4 4 0 W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L it e r a t u r e W in t e r 2 0 0 8 indeed destabilize the roles in which he traded, it is unclear how or when. The problem here is not Pérez’s but rather that of a common cultural studies reading practice that conflates academic hermeneutic theory with the actual reception of film viewers. In the final chapter, Pérez moves out of normative critical modes and per­ forms a family dissection with particular attention to his grandfather’s unpub­ lished journals. The point here is how family histories, like novels and other cultural objects, turn to myths and idealizations and, in the process, suppress certain elements— in this case the accusation that one of his ancestors had raped a woman. Rather than present his family history as representative of Mexican American experiences, Pérez offers his grandfather’s memoirs as an example of the way the hacienda myth made its way from revolutionary Mexico to California. This is an honest, if risky, critical turn, and Pérez should be commended for bring­ ing to light (rather than suppressing) his own critical investments. Given his own interest, Pérez could follow in the footsteps of Luis Gomez’s grandson and secure the publication of Francisco Robles Pérez’s journals so that other readers and scholars could consider the broader social implications of this account. These books point to an important critical effect of Chicano studies in the last two decades. It is no longer rare for critics, whether working on scholarly editions or academic studies, to explore the ways their personal experiences and family histories intersect with their subjects. Bringing forth that intersection will not always lead to fruitful results, but these two books certainly contribute to scholarship in significant ways. Making Home Work: Domesticity and Native American Assimilation in the American West, 1860— 1919. By Jane E. Simonsen. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. 288 pages, $59.95/$22.50. Reviewed by Donelle Dreese Northern Kentucky University, Highland Heights Making Home Work is an important investigation into the workings of home and property in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as they relate to perceptions of women’s roles in society and the domestic sphere. Simonsen analyzes the work of Caroline Soule, Alice Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, Anna Dawson Wilde, and Angel DeCora to illustrate conflicting meanings and responses to ideas of “home” and women’s work as productions of culture and class in the American West. She explores the debates surrounding domestic life through examples of women as writers, intellectuals, artists, farmers, and leaders in soci­ ety all working to reconfigure the definition and value of domestic work. Borrowing from postcolonialism the term contact zone, Simonsen’s Making Home Work studies the instability of domestic work as a physical presence and an ideological concept when different groups and power structures converged B o o k R e v ie w s and, thus, influenced, challenged, and changed prevailing preconceptions and aesthetics of home. The friction between men and women, indigenous cultures and white society, and professionals and labor workers in relation to domesticity put into question the notion that home work is natural to women and rewarding for its own sake and demonstrated that domestic work is an idea wholly constructed by the social, cultural, and economic forces at play. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Simonsen’s discussion is the explo­ ration of how white middle-class domestic ideals were used to encourage the assimilation process of American Indian women into white society. The binary of “savage” versus “civilized” was a barometer through which many domestic workers defined themselves, but the promotion of the white middle-class way of life wasn’t always so easy when white women felt that native women had more freedom in their home life. Additionally, according to Simonsen, “by the early twentieth century, some white women were reversing the claims of earlier reformers by alleging that native women were more domestic than their white sisters” (151). This reversal challenged the prevailing power dynamic that...