| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 33.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Mexican American Odyssey: Felix Tijerina, Entrepreneur and Civic Leader, 1905–1965. By Thomas H. Kreneck. (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2001. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. xviii + 402 pp. $39.95.)

Thomas Kreneck's biography of Felix Tijerina is disguised as a Mexican Horatio Alger story: a fatherless boy, born into poverty in Mexico, migrates with his family to Houston in search of the American Dream. He becomes a busboy in a Mexican restaurant where his eagerness to please is noticed by the owner who befriends him and teaches him the restaurant trade. The boy learns English, changes his name from Filiberto to Felix, and charms the Anglo patrons in the restaurant. He marries a Mexican American woman with similar ambitions, despite his family's disapproval of the young woman's dark skin. They save their money and open a Mexican restaurant near an Anglo American neighborhood, complete with a menu tailored to suit American tastes and a service policy that excludes African Americans. Handsome profits enable Tijerina to develop a chain of Mexican restaurants. His elegant home, complete with an African American nanny, symbolizes his American Dream. The Tijerinas become wealthy and pseudo-white, mingle with important Anglo Americans, and merge into the middle class. . . .

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