ABSTRACT
Students often place Mexican American or Chicano/a literary history around the mid-twentieth century. They may have some knowledge of the 1960s Chicano Civil Rights Movement, and the literature of the historical period between 1950 and 2000. Lesser known to them may be the fact that a Mexican American novelist/playwright, named María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, was present during President Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861. More surprising to them is finding out this writer is a woman, multilingual, trained to litigate in court, and raised in Mexico at a time when land inheritance was matrilineal. Teaching these facts alone opens a whole new world to students and encourages them to find out more about what it means to be Latina or Latino in the United States. They soon learn that Mexican American literary history really began in 1848 with the signing of The Treaty of Guadalupe. (See also Jesse Alemán’s discussion of this phenomenon in Chapter 1 in this volume.) María Amparo Ruiz de Burton was born in 1832 and died in 1895. Her wealthy,
upper-class family owned what is now most of Riverside and Orange County in Southern California. Ruiz de Burton was privately tutored. She studied Latin, French, English, as well as Spanish. She was well read. Among her favorite writers, who also influenced her own work, were Victor Hugo and Émile Zola. Her life spans remarkable moments in history: the Mexican American War (1846-48), the Civil War (1861-65), the French Intervention and Occupation of Mexico (1861-67). Studying her work, then, is an important way to begin a comprehensive study of Mexican American and Chicano/a history. To use her work within an interdisciplinary context also allows for a presentation of various perspectives. Students majoring in various fields of study (history, literature, sociology, political science, psychology, modern languages, even creative writing, for example) will be able to apply their expertise in classroom discussions about Ruiz de Burton’s work. I have taught Ruiz de Burton’s two novels, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872), The
Squatter and the Don (1885), and her play, Don Quixote de la Mancha: A Comedy in Five Acts (1876) in a variety of contexts as well as geographic areas. I’ve taught her at universities in California as well as in the Midwest. I’ve taught her work to primarily Latino students, white students, and in racially mixed classes. Class also figures prominently within the lecture and discussion format. Students coming from working-class backgrounds will question whether or not Ruiz de Burton should be taught in a Chicano literature course. A lively discussion will ensue. My answer is always “yes” because Chicanos and Latinos represent all class levels. Ruiz de Burton began her life in an upper class family. After 1848, she became the “other,” having to battle land claims, and her own position under an Anglo-American society. At the end of her life, she was destitute, dying penniless in Chicago, Illinois.
