Border Bodies - by Bernadine Marie Hernández

About the Book

"In this study of sex, gender, sexual violence, and power along the border, Bernadine Hernâandez brings to light under-heard stories of women who lived in a critical era of American history. Elaborating on the concept of sexual capital, she uses little-known newspapers and periodicals, letters, testimonios, court cases, short stories, and photographs to reveal how sex, violence, and capital conspired to govern not only women's bodies but their role in the changing American Southwest"--

Book Synopsis

In this study of sex, gender, sexual violence, and power along the border, Bernadine Marie Hernandez brings to light under-heard stories of women who lived in a critical era of American history. Elaborating on the concept of sexual capital, she uses little-known newspapers and periodicals, letters, testimonios, court cases, short stories, and photographs to reveal how sex, violence, and capital conspired to govern not only women's bodies but their role in the changing American Southwest. Hernandez focuses on a time when the borderlands saw a rapid influx of white settlers who encountered elite landholding Californios, Hispanos, and Tejanos. Sex was inseparable from power in the borderlands, and women were integral to the stabilization of that power.

In drawing these stories from the archive, Hernandez illuminates contemporary ideas of sexuality through the lens of the borderland's history of expansionist, violent, and gendered conquest. By extension, Hernandez argues that Mexicana, Nuevomexicana, Californiana, and Tejana women were key actors in the formation of the western United States, even as they are too often erased from the region's story.

Review Quotes

A wonderful addition for graduate courses and for scholars of the borderlands, labor history, gender and sexuality studies, and Chicanx/Latinx studies. Its influence will undoubtedly grow in the years to come."--Journal of Arizona History

Bernadine Hernandez offers a rich, complex history of the Southwestern borderlands that is in deep conversation with Marxist and feminist theorists. . . . [A] timely contribution that points the way toward new approaches to centering marginalized groups in the histories of contested spaces."--Journal of African American History

Absorbing. . . . While there are many strengths to Border Bodies, the most noteworthy is how teachable each chapter is for upper-division and graduate students."--Journal of the Civil War Era

An important study . . . . Border Bodies effectively demonstrates the dehumanizing forces of sexual capital on large populations of women who are often erased from history . . . . Highly recommended."--CHOICE

An impressive and meticulous archival work. . . .In five chapters, [Hernandez] immerses us in the heart of her poignant and necessary investigation through moments of sexual and gender violence in the U.S. borderlands between 1834 and 1916."--Journal of Borderlands Studies

This important, nuanced volume shines a light on the importance of Mexicana, Nuevomexicana, Californiana, and Tejana women in the evolution of the U.S. (south)west."--Ms. Magazine