Listening to Rosita: The Business of Tejana Music and Culture, 1930–1955 by Mary Ann Villarreal (review)

In Listening to Rosita: The Business of Tejana Music and Culture, 1930– 1955, Mary Ann Villarreal uncovers the long-forgotten stories of Mexican American female singers and business owners who lived and worked from 1930 to 1955 in the area that Villarreal calls the Texas Triangle, the area of South Texas defined by lines drawn between Houston, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio. Villarreal argues that this region gave Mexican Americans “the opportunity to craft a personal and cultural distinctiveness,” which attracted customers from all backgrounds (xxxi). Furthermore, it was in this Triangle where Mexican Americans crafted a new cultural identity, “Texas Mexicans,” based on ideas of citizenship and the right to equality and opportunity.

Villarreal breaks Listening to Rosita into five thematic chapters. Her first chapter examines the successful career of Rosita Fernández, one of the most popular Mexican American female singers of the time. The next four chapters look at different aspects of female and family-owned businesses in the Triangle. Chapter two focuses on female bar owners and singers who consistently negotiated with the gender dynamics of the day to manage their own careers and run their own businesses. The third chapter centers on Corpus Christi, showing how civil rights activism and business communities merged to effect real change in the city and capitalize on Spanish-speaking patrons. Chapter four details how the Texas Triangle’s cities and rural areas worked together to create the cultural identity of Texas Mexicans. In the final chapter, Villarreal conveys how Mexican Americans used the new identity of Texas Mexicans to negotiate their place both inside and outside of their communities.

In Listening to Rosita, Mary Ann Villarreal presents an innovative work by focusing on a population of entrepreneurs that has been ignored in the historical literature. She builds on and complicates the recent scholarship on Mexican American activism, especially the League of United Latin American Citizens. The author accomplishes this historical recovery by using oral histories and interviews done with these female singers and businesswomen. Listening to Rosita’s originality is also found in Villarreal’s theories of place and space, which she weaves throughout her work when discussing both the Texas Triangle and the mobility of female singers.

While Listening to Rosita is an important entry into the historiography, there are a few issues. Some readers may find her historiographical discussions within the text confusing and more appropriate for footnotes. It also suffers from repetition as the same stories and people are referenced multiple times. Still, Villarreal’s work is a helpful addition to the literature because it highlights the female and family-owned businesses and their contribution to both the creation of the cultural identity of Texas Mexicans and the economics of the Texas Triangle.