Jewish Latinidad: Race, Religion, and U.S.-Mexico Border

Critical Response Paper

  You will write four, 2-3 pages, 1.5-spaced, critical response papers throughout the quarter.
  Papers should respond to the themes, concepts, and questions illuminated through the weeks lectures and readings.  Responses must incorporate at least 1 secondary source and 1 primary source from the weeks assigned readings. Papers may include connections to other readings, draw on personal experiences, critiques of the authors approach and post future questions and research possibilities
  Response papers will help deepen your engagement with the readings, hone your analytic skills and push you to make meaningful connections between primary and secondary sources–this is the work of the historian!
Quote and cite your evidence in your analysis*  Use all sources (minimum 5 quotes to be used in the paper)

Primary Source –
D. J. Waldie. Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. WW Norton & Company, April 17, 2005
Primary Source –
Harvest of loneliness (film)- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcV2EOo-Xdc&feature=youtu.be

Secondary Source – 
George Snchez. Whats Good for Boyle Heights is Good for the Jews: Creating Multiracialism on the Eastside during the 1950s. American Quarterly (September 2004)

Secondary Source –
Mae M. Ngai Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Chapter 4 (127 – 166)

The main point to focus and answer:
-Bracero Program ( 1942-64, between Mexico and the US)
– Growing dependence on Mexican Labor in Southwest
-wetback Problem – limits of Mexican-American solidarity
-Jewish inclusion into American national identity
-Jewish race-> ethnicity
-Jewish/Latinx inter-group coalitions in the border region

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