About the series  xi

Acknowledgments  xiii

Author's Note  xv

Prologue: Sin padre  1

M�co lindo y querido: Dearest and beloved Mexico  3

A donde iran los muertos? Qui�sabe a donde iran: Where will the dead go? Who knows where they will go  41

Buscando abrigo y no lo encontraran: Searching for shelter they will never find  81

Que lejos estoy del suelo donde he nacido: So far from the land that gave me birth  139

She kept her head in a jar by the door: Mantuvo su cabeza el el jarr�n junto a la puerta  159

Epilogue: Purging the Skeletons, Bone by Bone  185

Songs Quoted in Text  191

Glossary  201

"I found myself confounded into silence by the magnitude of the author’s pain and by the confessional frankness in her tone as she writes about the traumas inflicted upon her and her sisters . . . the author possesses great courage and resilience. . . . Telling this story must have taken awesome strength. . . . I can imagine that survivors of abuse might find her calmness encouraging: it suggests healing is possible even in the worst cases. I believe that Méndez-Negrete has made a positive contribution to the feminist literature on trauma and incest."—Mariya Strauss, Bookslut

“Las Hijas de Juan is a tale of female triumph, justice and hope. . . . To its great merit this true story, written in the tone of a novel, exposes unflinchingly some of the tragic realities faced by many children worldwide who end up living as illegal immigrants and unaccounted for. It breaks the silence about incest within a poor Mexican-American family with such brutal candor that it has been hailed as a feminist survival story. By depicting the deep prejudices that persist in so many Mexican males, it candidly lays bare the cruelty and discrimination faced by their women, especially those who remain in limbo on both sides of the border picking up the pieces for their errant men.”—Georgina Jiménez, Latin American Review of Books

“The fact that Mendez-Negrete was able to share her story is a service to all of us. . . . Mendez-Negrete's writing skills are excellent. The story flows! It really does. This book is one that alerts us to what goes on in all cultures, I would suppose. It is a story that deals with one Hispanic family. Yet the story has a universal dimension to it.”—John Saunders, La Bloga

"Through her courageous telling of survival and resiliency, Méndez-Negrete exposes those often overlooked exchanges that occur in the intimate sphere, where bodies are gendered, classed, and racialized."—Lydia R. Otero, New Mexico Historical Review

"Mendez-Negrete's accounts almost make one feel like a voyeur into her past, seeing and feeling what she has suffered."—Susan M. DeLuca, Families in Society

“Las Hijas de Juan, most likely the first testimonio of incest in Chicana letters (as scholars Patrisia González and Roberto Rodríguez have noted), makes a crucial contribution to the growing and broader feminist literature on incest and trauma.”—Marci R. McMahon, Women’s Studies

“[Las hijas de Juan] is the childhood story of courage and resistance to patriarchy too frightening to be imagined and too hurtful to be forgotten.”—Norma L. Cárdenas, Journal of Latinos and Education

"I found myself confounded into silence by the magnitude of the author’s pain and by the confessional frankness in her tone as she writes about the traumas inflicted upon her and her sisters . . . the author possesses great courage and resilience. . . . Telling this story must have taken awesome strength. . . . I can imagine that survivors of abuse might find her calmness encouraging: it suggests healing is possible even in the worst cases. I believe that Méndez-Negrete has made a positive contribution to the feminist literature on trauma and incest."—Mariya Strauss, Bookslut

“Las Hijas de Juan is a tale of female triumph, justice and hope. . . . To its great merit this true story, written in the tone of a novel, exposes unflinchingly some of the tragic realities faced by many children worldwide who end up living as illegal immigrants and unaccounted for. It breaks the silence about incest within a poor Mexican-American family with such brutal candor that it has been hailed as a feminist survival story. By depicting the deep prejudices that persist in so many Mexican males, it candidly lays bare the cruelty and discrimination faced by their women, especially those who remain in limbo on both sides of the border picking up the pieces for their errant men.”—Georgina Jiménez, Latin American Review of Books

“The fact that Mendez-Negrete was able to share her story is a service to all of us. . . . Mendez-Negrete's writing skills are excellent. The story flows! It really does. This book is one that alerts us to what goes on in all cultures, I would suppose. It is a story that deals with one Hispanic family. Yet the story has a universal dimension to it.”—John Saunders, La Bloga

"Through her courageous telling of survival and resiliency, Méndez-Negrete exposes those often overlooked exchanges that occur in the intimate sphere, where bodies are gendered, classed, and racialized."—Lydia R. Otero, New Mexico Historical Review

"Mendez-Negrete's accounts almost make one feel like a voyeur into her past, seeing and feeling what she has suffered."—Susan M. DeLuca, Families in Society

“Las Hijas de Juan, most likely the first testimonio of incest in Chicana letters (as scholars Patrisia González and Roberto Rodríguez have noted), makes a crucial contribution to the growing and broader feminist literature on incest and trauma.”—Marci R. McMahon, Women’s Studies

“[Las hijas de Juan] is the childhood story of courage and resistance to patriarchy too frightening to be imagined and too hurtful to be forgotten.”—Norma L. Cárdenas, Journal of Latinos and Education

“To tell this story took an inordinate amount of courage; to have survived it makes me marvel at the power of the human spirit. As a reader, one feels deeply grateful for the privilege of being granted into its confidence. Josie Méndez-Negrete writes that the healing is not in the telling, but perhaps it resides in us, the listeners. May this story, then, travel far.”—Sandra Cisneros

“Las hijas de Juan breaks new ground in the literature of Chicano/a autobiography by taking on the shameful issue of paternal incest at the same time that it demonstrates the process of healing through speaking, writing, and remembering. This book is the genuine song of the survivor, and the narrator’s personal story is also a political reality of the Chicano/a and Latino/a community, an ugly beast fed on silence that must be both contained and confronted. More than anything, Las hijas de Juan shows us the imperative need to speak the secrets that, unfortunately, bind and damage so many mujeres in our communities.”—Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Latino Studies

“Las hijas de Juan is a searching and searingly honest portrayal of struggle, survival, and corage! This is a woman’s story that has lessons for the entire community.”—Louis Gerard Mendoza, author of Historia: The Literary Making of Chicana and Chicano History

Permission to Photocopy (coursepacks)

If you are requesting permission to photocopy material for classroom use, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at copyright.com;

If the Copyright Clearance Center cannot grant permission, you may request permission from our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Permission to Reprint

If you are requesting permission to reprint DUP material (journal or book selection) in another book or in any other format, contact our Copyrights & Permissions Manager (use Contact Information listed below).

Images/Art

Many images/art used in material copyrighted by Duke University Press are controlled, not by the Press, but by the owner of the image. Please check the credit line adjacent to the illustration, as well as the front and back matter of the book for a list of credits. You must obtain permission directly from the owner of the image. Occasionally, Duke University Press controls the rights to maps or other drawings. Please direct permission requests for these images to permissions@dukeupress.edu.
For book covers to accompany reviews, please contact the publicity department.

Subsidiary Rights/Foreign Translations

If you're interested in a Duke University Press book for subsidiary rights/translations, please contact permissions@dukeupress.edu. Include the book title/author, rights sought, and estimated print run.

Disability Requests

Instructions for requesting an electronic text on behalf of a student with disabilities are available here.

Rights & Permissions Contact Information

Email: permissions@dukeupress.edu

Email contact for coursepacks: asstpermissions@dukeupress.edu

Fax: 919-688-4574

Mail:
Duke University Press
Rights and Permissions
905 W. Main Street
Suite 18B
Durham, NC 27701

For all requests please include:

1. Author's name. If book has an editor that is different from the article author, include editor's name also.

2. Title of the journal article or book chapter and title of journal or title of book

3. Page numbers (if excerpting, provide specifics)

For coursepacks, please also note: The number of copies requested, the school and professor requesting

For reprints and subsidiary rights, please also note: Your volume title, publication date, publisher, print run, page count, rights sought