Occupying Our Space

The Mestiza Rhetorics of Mexican Women Journalists and Activists, 1875–1942

Cristina Devereaux Ramírez

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780816550326, 9780816530748
• eBook ISBN: 9780816502035
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Mexican History
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Winifred Bryan Horner Outstanding Book Award Winner

Occupying Our Space sheds new light on the contributions of Mexican women journalists and writers during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked as the zenith of Mexican journalism. Journalists played a significant role in transforming Mexican social and political life before and after the Revolution (1910–1920), and women were a part of this movement as publishers, writers, public speakers, and political activists. However, their contributions to the broad historical changes associated with the Revolution, as well as the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, are often excluded or overlooked.
 
This book fills a gap in feminine rhetorical history by providing an in-depth look at several important journalists who claimed rhetorical puestos, or public speaking spaces. The book closely examines the writings of Laureana Wright de Kleinhans (1842–1896), Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza (1875­–1942), the political group Las mujeres de Zitácuaro (1900), Hermila Galindo (1896–1954), and others. Grounded in the overarching theoretical lens of mestiza rhetoric, Occupying Our Space considers the ways in which Mexican women journalists negotiated shifting feminine identities and the emerging national politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With full-length Spanish primary documents along with their translations, this scholarship reframes the conversation about the rhetorical and intellectual role women played in the ever-changing political and identity culture in Mexico.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword by Jacqueline Jones Royster
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction—A Feminist Recovery Project: Mexican Women Journalists and Activists at the Forefront of Change
• Chapter 1. Historical and Theoretical Directions in Mestiza Rhetoric
• Chapter 2. Las Hijas del Anáhuac: Laureana Wright de Kleinhans and Other Pioneering Women in Journalism in the Late Nineteenth Century
• Chapter 3. “Hear Us!”: The Feminist Protests of Las Mujeres de Zitácuaro
• Chapter 4. Rompiendo barreras: Juana Belén Gutiérrez de Mendoza’s Revolutionary Rhetoric
• Chapter 5. Mi grano de arena en esa hermosa labor: Hermila Galindo’s Feminationalist Rhetoric
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index