Jason Klokkenga Normal West High School

After reading Arturo Rosales' book, Chicano!, I was impressed with the amount of detail the book gave me about Mexican-Americans. Although the book started slow in my opinion, it got quite interesting as it moved along tracing the path Mexican-Americans had traveled on during the last 200 years or so. This book allows the reader, whether familiar or not with Mexican-American history, an insight, which although extremely comprehensive, a history about a people which can very easily be compared to the African-American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s-1960s.

What I found to be the most interesting part of this book was how similar it was to the African-American movement to attain equality. Immediately I began thinking of possible lessons/topics I could discuss with my students about these two movements. One area in particular that intrigued my curiosity was perceived rights vs. actual rights. This notion that a Mexican-American may have had some rights today but then tomorrow may not have those rights was extremely interesting in reading about how these perceptions changed throughout the United States. This can easily be compared to how African-Americans were treated in different parts of the United States. This is just another example of how this movement can be compared to the African-American one.

Overall, I was impressed with Rosales's work, although I think it could have benefited from not using so many acronyms to the uneducated reader on Mexican-American history. This part made it difficult at times to understand what was going on. In terms of being able to use the book, I will use it with my classes when studying African-American civil rights and struggles that they had and compare that to the Mexican-American struggle that took place. I believe this book has some real possibilities for getting students to really examine two civil rights movements, for example, and compare and contrast the two. I believe in doing this, students will benefit greatly by learning about both movements and being able to argue reasons for or against the following: Which movement was more successful? Is there the need for movement today? Is the movement dead right now? These are just a few of the thousands of possible doors that Rosales's book Chicano has allowed me to open when examining civil rights movements.

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