Latina Lives in Milwaukee by Theresa Delgadillo (review)

Latina Lives in Milwaukee by Theresa Delgadillo University of Illinois Press. 2015. 240 pages. paperback $28.00. REVIEWED BY ILIANA YAMILETH RODRIGUEZ Theresa Delgadillo’s Latina Lives in Milwaukee offers readers a look at twentieth-century Latina/o life in the United States Midwest. In order to address the limited archives detailing Latina/o Midwest history, Latina Lives puts forth a unique intersectional approach to collecting, editing, and presenting oral histories in order to fill some gaps in this regional story. This text is informed through the life stories of eleven Latina women who migrated to, lived in, or were born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. LatinaLives contributes not only to the expanding body of literature on Latina/os in the Midwest but also to our overall understanding of everyday interethnic Latina/o life in the Milwaukee area from the 1920s onward. These Mexican, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Salvadoran American women’s oral histories highlight both individual and shared experiences in Milwaukee. The text is animated by Delgadillo’s commitment to centering the women’s narratives in order to emphasize Latina experiences with education , family life, professionalism and entrepreneurship, social and political organizations , cultural fiestas, civic movements, religion, and transnational migration. The book is organized into nine chapters and an epilogue, with eight of the chapters centering on specific women’s oral histories and life stories. In chapter 1, which serves as an introduction to the collection of interviews, Delgadillo lays out her interdisciplinary framework and use of oral history, ethnography, and biography methods and research. She suggests that the Latina/o populations in the Midwest have had greater levels of interethnic interaction than those in other regions in the United States, and therefore she chooses a framework of multiple latinidades to examine both the regionally particular and gendered dimensions of Latina/o life in Milwaukee. A rather distinctive quality of Latina Lives is Delgadillo’s editing choices in regard to the oral histories that make up the bulk of the book. Rather than using the oral histories as evidence for a general historical analysis of the Latina/o Midwest, Delgadillo situates the collected narratives front and center as uninterrupted interview selections , edited not with the author’s own analysis but with section headings serving as signposts for readers. Excluding chapter 1 and the epilogue, Delgadillo is present only through the editing choices, which were also a collaborative process, and the section headers, thus allowing the women’s stories to shine. This editing style gives the oral histories a seamless flow that draws readers into the intimate details of everyday life. This choice in editing makes the book’s structure itself part of a larger argument, as 142 reviews the women’s oral histories take on some qualities resembling testimonios or autohistorias . Though acknowledging that these narratives are predominantly centered on individual experiences, Delgadillo notes the testimonial moments, the “times in the story when a woman is aware of narrating an experience shared by many,” found within the oral histories. As for autohistorias, Delgadillo draws on Gloria Anzaldúa’s argument that women of color tell both a personal and a communal history through these stories. These different characteristics fall together to form Delgadillo’s interdisciplinary approach to life writing, evident in her approach to displaying the oral histories. The book’s chronological organization allows the women’s narratives to stand on their own while still taking readers through the broader history of the Latina/o community as it grew and developed in the twentieth century. Each of the remaining chapters is dedicated to one of the eleven women and her experiences in Milwaukee. The only exception to this is chapter 3, which focuses on the oral histories of the four Sandoval sisters and their familial lives in Milwaukee since arriving to the area in the 1920s. Chapter 2 details Antonia Morales and her family’s arrival to Milwaukee in the 1920s, and includes discussions relating to health issues and the challenges of raising eight children. María Monreal Cameron discusses her family’s move from Texas to Wisconsin in the 1940s in chapter 4, as well as her cultural and leadership experiences as a Mexican American woman. Chapter...