Ask a Mexican
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
From award-winning columnist and favorite talking head Gustavo Arellano, comes this explosive, irreverent, smart, and hilarious Los Angeles Times bestseller.
¡Ask a Mexican! is a collection of questions and answers from Gustavo Arellano that explore the clichés of lowriders, busboys, and housekeepers; drunks and scoundrels; heroes and celebrities; and most important, millions upon millions of law-abiding, patriotic American citizens and their illegal-immigrant cousins who represent some $600 billion in economic power.
At a strong eighteen percent of the U.S. population, Latinos have become America's largest minority—and Mexicans make up a large part of that number. Gustavo confronts the bogeymen of racism, xenophobia, and ignorance prompted by such demographic changes through answering questions put to him by readers of his ¡Ask a Mexican! column in California's OC Weekly. He challenges readers to find a more entertaining way to understand Mexican culture that doesn't involve a taco-and-enchilada combo.
From lighter topics like Latin pop and great Mexican food to more serious issues like immigration and race relations, ¡Ask a Mexican! runs the gamut. Why do Mexicans call white people gringos? Are all Mexicans Catholic? What's the best tequila? Gustavo answers a wide range of legitimate and illegitimate questions, in the hopes of making a few readers angry, making most of us laugh, sparking a greater dialogue, and enhancing cross-cultural understanding.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Arellano's popular Orange County Weekly column " Ask a Mexican!" now widely syndicated and gathered in this acerbic volume, he answers serious, curious, and sometimes hateful but mostly irreverent questions about Mexicans. This book compiles what are presumably the best question-and-answer exchanges over the past two years, under topics including language, sex, immigration and food. Arellano wittily defuses bigotry and mocks stereotypes with his often well-researched replies. To the inquiry on the authenticity of flour vs. corn tortillas, he explains that the Spaniards created the former. "Why do Mexicans wear their clothes when swimming?" is a recurring question among Arellano's readers; his answer: good manners. In response to the vitriolic "What is it about the word illegal that Mexicans don't understand," he points out that U.S. employers don't understand the word either. The author's relentless irony and reclamation of derogatory terms (e.g., "wab," the Orange County version of wetback) is not for the faint of heart, but this approach is a welcome reprieve from common tiptoeing around the fraught subjects of race relations and immigration.
