Reviews for The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California

The average rating for The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-07-21 00:00:00 Jeff Harris Murguía was a San Francisco poet laureate and I love his work, especially his poem "16th and Valencia" on the hotel where Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo was written. The Medicine of Memory exhibits the importance of Chicano memory, our history, and family stories, which often don't get told. Murguía, Californio, Chicano, and Indio, works through the contradictions of the Californio and Indigenous inheritance, an important issue particularly now with many statues of colonizers coming down. (Check out the chapter "The "Good Old" Mission Days Never existed"). Murguía, travels, unravels, and dissects these inherited histories, including those he lived. He offers a memoir of growing up near the ruins of missions and research about his family history and the horrors of mission life there. He confronts other contradictions, such as between the Chicano experience and Mexican and promotes decolonial Indigenous outlooks. The chapters mix about high school, the Chicano Movement, and tracking down Josefa, the first Mexican American recorded as lynched by Americans in Gold Country. He even tracks down the oldest continually inhabited area in North America. There is research, imagined times, and none of this nods: there are fights, FBI interviews, proving he is a poet to cops and he didn't steal his own books, you name it. For me, Murguía does the work to offer us history, our connections and conflicts via his own family stories and memories, a missing component of education. This is an elder filling us in on ourselves and our history and inheritance which I as a Chicano, Indio, and Californio appreciate.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-05-07 00:00:00 Mike Riz i loved this book. california, tijuana, mexico city, san francisco. the first time i have felt rooted/related to a book. learned a few things and planted the seed to learn more and more about los angeles. a must read for us native californians, and transplants alike.