A Story of Stories

The Texas Border Barrio Life and Writings of Doña Ramona González

Cristina Devereaux Ramírez

• Publisher: Tinta Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780809337408, 9780816530748
• eBook ISBN: 9781595349972
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

One afternoon in fall 2015 Cristina Devereaux Ramírez’s mother called and, with a tone of urgency in her voice, asked her to come to the house and take a look at something she had discovered when she was sorting through boxes in the attic. When Ramírez arrived, she found her family sifting through papers in an old vegetable box, reading some of the more than 750 pages of Spanish language poems, short stories, fables, and dichos Ramírez’s maternal grandmother, Ramona González, had written. Some pieces were works in progress, complete with word and phrase strikethroughs and handwritten notes in the margins, while others were neatly typed prose or what might have been final drafts. None of González’s writings had seen the outside of that box for decades, at least since 1995 when the family matriarch passed away.

González—or Doña Ramona, as she was often called—was born in 1906 in the El Paso border barrio of Chihuahuita, sometimes referred to as the Ellis Island of the Southwest. Her writing celebrates the rich Mexican American culture of Chihuahuita, a neighborhood the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified in 2016 as one of America’s most endangered historic places. A mother, corner grocery store owner, published writer, and community activist, González was one of the few Tejanas profiled in Worthy Mothers of Texas, 1776–1976 A Story of Stories from a Texas Border Barrio, Ramírez chronicles the life of her abuela with the care of a granddaughter and, with the eye of a scholar, analyzes selections from González’s work and its significance to El Paso history, Chicano literature, border barrio folklore, and cross-border civic movements in the mid-twentieth century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword, by Norma Elia Cantú
• Introduction
• Memorias ancestrales / Ancestral Rememberings
• Un cuento de cuentos / A Story of Stories
• Chihuahuita, el barrio de mi corazón
• Cuentos del barrio / Stories from the Barrio, Part I
• González Grocery, el alma del barrio
• Cuentos del barrio / Stories from the Barrio, Part II
• Barrio Literacy: Doña Ramona’s Poems and Fables for Children
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Image Credits
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author