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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| José Alamillo. Making Lemonade Out of Lemons: Mexican American Labor and Leisure in a California Town, 1880–1960. (Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Centennial Series.) Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2006. Pp. xii, 220. Cloth $60.00, paper $25.00.
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| José Alamillo's study of Mexican citrus workers in Corona, California explores how leisure helped workers craft a unique cultural identity and resist the hegemonic influence of white citrus growers. In the process, it describes how Corona became "The Lemon Capital of the World." |
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Industrial paternalism made leisure one of the few parts of their lives that Mexican workers could control. Not surprisingly, therefore, Mexican workers found great satisfaction in leisure pursuits. But satisfaction and romanticization are different things, and Alamillo is careful not to romanticize the leisure culture of Mexican workers. Like their work culture, leisure culture was, at times, rough and patriarchal, as seen in the pool halls and baseball fields identified as male spaces. In further entrenching sexual segregation, Mexican workers undermined class solidarity and resistance to owner demands. |
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