Looking beyond the satin gowns, opera-length gloves, and sparkling tiaras that signify Filipino debutantes and Mexican quinceaeras, Evelyn Ibatan Rodriguez examines the meaning of these coming-of-age rituals for immigrant American families. "Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceaeras" draws parallels between these communal ceremonies, as they each share a commonality in Spanish heritage and Catholicism and include a highly ritualized party. Rodriguez analyzes these rites and festivities to explain what they reveal about the individuals, families, and communities who organize and participate in them.a Drawing on over fifty in-depth interviews with members of these fast-growing American Asian and Latino populations, Rodriguez shows how these communal celebrations of daughters have been adapted by immigrant families to assert their cultural pride and affirm their American belonging. "Celebrating Debutantes and Quinceaeras" provides an intimate and compelling portrait of the various ways immigrants and their children are purposefully, strategically, and creatively employing Filipino American debutantes and Mexican American quinceaeras to simultaneously challenge and assimilate into U.S. culture and forge new understandings of what it means to be Mexican, Filipino, and American.

Product Description: This American popular culture reader contains over ninety current, thought-provoking selections by both student and professional writers with diverse backgrounds. The readings are organized around ten themes relevant to contemporary American society...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In Usable Pasts, fourteen authors examine the manipulation of traditional expressions among a variety of groups from the United States and Canada: the development of a pictorial style by Navajo weavers in response to traders, Mexican American responses to the appropriation of traditional foods by Anglos, the expressive forms of communication that engender and sustain a sense of community in an African American women's social club and among elderly Yiddish folksingers in Miami Beach, the incorporation of mass media images into the "C&Ts" (customs and traditions) of a Boy Scout troop, the changing meaning of their defining Exodus-like migration to Mormons, Newfoundlanders' appropriation through the rum-drinking ritual called the Schreech-In of outsiders' stereotypes, outsiders' imposition of the once-despised lobster as the emblem of Maine, the contest over Texas's heroic Alamo legend and its departures from historical fact, and how yellow ribbons were transformed from an image in a pop song to a national symbol of "resolve...read more

Product Description: A professor of nursing, expert in multicultural health care and social services, describes the basic attitudes and beliefs of 15 important ethnic and religious groups in America and shows how these traits can affect behavior during illness or during social work interventions...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)