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  • From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front by Elizabeth R. Escobedo
  • Llana Barber
From Coveralls to Zoot Suits: The Lives of Mexican American Women on the World War II Home Front. By Elizabeth R. Escobedo. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina. 2013.

In the epilogue of From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, Elizabeth Escobedo discusses the controversy that erupted over the conspicuous absence of Latinos from Ken Burns’s 2007 documentary on World War II. Defenders of the documentary argued not only that Burns had artistic freedom to focus on whomever he chose, but that Latino experiences of the war were essentially the same as white experiences, as Latinos were not formally marked off as non-white within the still-segregated U.S. military. In contrast, Escobedo’s rich social history of Mexican American women in Los Angeles clearly illustrates the distinctiveness of Mexican American wartime experiences as shaped by their complicated racial positioning: legally white, but still subject to various forms of discrimination, segregation, and prejudice, and often given [End Page 171] preference over African Americans, particularly in the context of wartime pressures to desegregate military industries.

Escobedo’s detailed work leaves no doubt that the distinctive experiences of Mexican American women form a powerful lens through which to view U.S. history more generally, particularly the history of World War II. Indeed, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits is not only a vibrant account of Mexican American women’s work and leisure in wartime Los Angeles, it would serve well as an introduction for undergraduates to some of the most important social, political, and economic transformations of the World War II era: the widespread movement of women into industrial labor; the promotion of racial liberalism and the initial federal efforts to desegregate war-related industries; as well as the complicated patriotism evident in many communities of color.

This last point is particularly well articulated by Escobedo, yet it’s given a new valence by her focus on Mexican American women. There has been ample scholarship on how African American, Mexican American, and Japanese American soldiers understood their wartime military service in relation to their second-class citizenship, and the weight such service gave to postwar calls for racial equality. Escobedo explores how Mexican American women’s participation in industrial labor and support for U.S. soldiers emerged out of a similar sense of patriotic duty and engendered a similar sense of entitlement to full racial equality after the war ended. She argues that many Mexican American women negotiated between this sense of responsibility and their desire to take advantage of the increased opportunities for independence and commercialized leisure offered during the war era. Informed by dozens of priceless oral history interviews, From Coveralls to Zoot Suits gives a vivid picture of the intoxicating new freedoms some Mexican American women found during this era, including chaperone-free interracial socializing in the city’s swing venues. Escobedo explores the allure, for many young Mexican American women, of adopting elements of zoot suit or “pachuca” style to craft a distinctly liberated, and sometimes rebellious, Mexican American identity. Noting in the epilogue that many of her informants passed away before the project was completed, Escobedo’s work conveys the urgency of incorporating these fascinating stories into our broader understanding of World War II.

Llana Barber
SUNY College at Old Westerby
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