Inspired and informed by his personal family history, postcolonial emphases and cultural studies, Robert Con Davis-Undiano brings a remarkably insightful and thorough discussion to the large, politically-charged issue of Mexican American presence in the United States. His gracious tone and precise language underscores his respect for the historical and contemporary situations involved. Optimistic, based upon convincing analysis of a variety of contexts, Davis-Undiano moves beyond mere political strife, instead setting a broad, rich cultural and personal understanding of the humanity bound in this often contentious context. His twenty-page conclusion, “A Better Future for America,” confirms the inferences he has presented in the previous pages, and convincingly supports the hybrid potential of cooperative coexistence with the Mexican American. The author’s explication and exposition esteems brown citizens and, by extension, other marginalized peoples while diffusing simplistic notions of racial paranoia too abundant in mainstream America.

The book opens with a discussion of the paintings of the Spanish Casta Tradition, explaining “how race happened in the Americas.” With close analysis of this historical basis, Davis-Undiano proceeds with a rich variety of the Chicano vision and practice, historical and contemporary. His topics include: 1) Mestizo Identity 2) Home Land 3) Remapping Community – through popular culture 4) The Body 5) Tomas Rivera and the Chicano Voice and 6) Chicano Literature, Studies and Resolana. He references an abundance of Chicano authors, painters and other artists. Additional commentary based on sociological and political readings balances the work. By explicating a significant amount of Chicano literature and art, making connections to the categories just mentioned, Davis-Undiano’s work keeps the challenge of Chicano initiatives alive. Moreover, he offers a satisfying fulfillment of the life-affirming goals of those first Chicano voices – voices we may have sometimes forgotten, or whose brilliance we may have too easily overlooked.

The strength of the book is found within the author’s ability to credibly and thoughtfully interpret multiple examples in each of his chapters. Mestizos Come Home! is an authoritative commentary, offering a variety of approaches to significant items in visual art, literature, sculpture, sociology, religion, popular culture. The writing unifies around the call toward home, and the great variety of topics discussed makes the reading enjoyable as well as informative. Not quite a manifesto, nor an encyclopedic treatment of scholarly detail, the book brilliantly balances contemporary and historical research from several academic disciplines with the personal, everydayness of negotiating shared space in a changing context. The author’s interpretive discussions do not dictate how to read or understand, but rather by thorough explanation and plausible insight, he shows us the value, even the beauty, of allowing mestizo identity its rightful place. The crux of the matter is that of claiming home, that is, dwelling and thriving in a place that has always been hybrid, and rightfully mestizo. This healing reclamation trumps simplistic, and ultimately unworkable, notions of separation or class warfare. Davis-Undiano writes: “The cultural challenge of being a mestizo in this difficult age should not be taken as a sign of living under a curse … the fallen condition of all who live the legacy of postcolonial culture. It must not be forgotten that since 1848 many Mexican Americans have been in their ancestral home, exactly where they belong, and since the 1960’s Mexican Americans have been coming home again by affirming their past and their present identities afresh. They have taken stock of communal resources and have recounted what they bring to America’s cultures.” (266)

Mestizos Come Home! is forward looking, and in many ways it offers the only satisfying resolution for those who are disturbed by the presence of the brown body in the United States. Davis-Undiano recognizes the work of prominent sociologist Samuel P. Huntington who also addresses many of the same cultural phenomena within the Mexican American community. Huntington, however, sees “the Mexican American community as pursuing a course that ultimately will weaken and degrade America. He sees no potential … for cultural renewal or reinvigoration, no celebration of mestizos coming home and contributing to the national culture’s health, economy, and character.” (260-261)

Davis-Undiano’s analysis offers a much more optimistic possibility. Rather than detached units of study, Davis-Undiano humanely portrays the brown bodies who are caught in the throes of this historical backlash, bodies subject to a mainstream’s neurotic vacillation between fascination and repulsion. Like the artists he explicates, Davis-Undiano focuses on “recentering the body as the vital locus of emotional and mental processes that constitute being human … Recovering the body is a profoundly humanizing act that entails acknowledging the effects of political, historical, and social forces and the goals that community is striving to accomplish regardless of what it professes.” (256, 257)

Despite his optimism, the implications of the author’s discussion continue within a political tug-of-war. Professor Davis-Undiano works in a state that has a history of aggressive political stances toward brown people. His hope is that a truthful, more comprehensive understanding of brown America will significantly contribute toward a practical and just democracy. The discussion is ripe with possibilities, but at the same time the response remains uncertain. The discussion of cover painting suggests this tension – “Robert and Liz” by John Valadez. Davis –Undiano calls this work a “masterpiece in which bodies speak subtly and powerfully about why they matter” (179). Their stance is uncertain, as if posing before a camera. Robert “stands to Liz’s right, his shoulders squared to us, looking at the viewer. To his left, leaning in an off-balance, contrapposto stance, Liz embraces Robert with her upper body only, her posture suggesting that she was pulled off balance. Their different stances create a tension” (179). The explication continues, drawing inferences from skin color, clothing, facial expression. Davis-Undiano concludes: “The drawing’s details suggest that these people matter. Their brown bodies matter … they are people with interior lives and plans for the future, and they are worth examining closely and taking seriously. Their working-class bodies may be invisible to others, and Robert’s body may be deadened by Western culture and the routine of his life as a male, but in the time of this work their bodies, requiring close scrutiny and care to decipher, tell us that the details of their lives are worth interpreting.” (180)

Davis-Undiano has written a rare book that is valuable for both the academic and the non-specialist. He provides 8 pages of color plates, 32 pages of end notes and works cited, but the notes add to the discussion rather than overwhelm the reader in abstract minutiae. This is a very readable book. Beyond these facts, the discussions he offers suggest a profound respect for the common man, the uneducated, the dispossessed, for the very brown people who make this discussion so necessary.

Reviewed by Ken Hada, East Central University, Ada, Oklahoma

Robert Con Davis-Undiano. Mestizos Come Home!: Making and Claiming Mexican American Identity. University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8061-5719-1.