Listening To Rosita

Everybody in the bar had to drop a quarter in the jukebox or be shamed by “Momo” Villarreal. It wasn’t about the money, Mary Ann Villarreal’s grandmother insisted. It was about the music—more songs for all the patrons of the Pecan Lounge in Tivoli, Texas. But for Mary Ann, whose schoolbooks those quarters bought, the money didn’t hurt. When as an adult Villarreal began to wonder how the few recordings of women singers made their way into that jukebox, questions about the money seemed inseparable from those about the music. In Listening to Rosita, Villarreal seeks answers by pursuing the story of a small group of Tejana singers and entrepreneurs in Corpus Christi, Houston, and San Antonio—the “Texas Triangle”—during the mid-twentieth century. Ultimately she recovers a social world and cultural landscape in central south Texas where Mexican American women negotiated the shifting boundaries of race and economics to assert a public presence. Drawing on oral history, interviews, and insights from ethnic and gender studies, Listening to Rosita provides a counternarrative to previous research on la música tejana, which has focused almost solely on musicians or musical genres. Villarreal instead chronicles women’s roles and contributions to the music industry. In spotlighting the sixty-year singing career of San Antonian Rosita Fernández, the author pulls the curtain back on all the women whose names and stories have been glaringly absent from the ethnic and economic history of Tejana music and culture. In this oral history of the Tejana cantantes who performed and owned businesses in the Texas Triangle, Listening to Rosita shows how ethnic Mexican entrepreneurs developed a unique identity in striving for success in a society that demeaned and segregated them. In telling their story, this book supplies a critical chapter long missing from the history of the West.

Love and Spirit Medicine chronicles the author’s mystical journey through the end of her marriage and into a focused, shamanic exploration of entheogenic mushrooms. A love relationship unfolded during that time, sending her into a dark night of the soul. Shonagh continued her shamanic explorations with the plant medicine, and discovered a well of resources. Using the mushrooms as a portal to the spirit worlds, Shonagh experienced a profound transformation of consciousness. She realized that the ceremonial use of sacred mushrooms offered a powerful path in her spiritual exploration. Each journey brought her into direct connection with the realms of the sacred. Through these journeys, she cultivated relationships with otherworldly beings that nourished her on a soul level. Through her desire to know Spirit and experience deep connection, she ultimately discovered her own divinity and her connection to the All. “Ultimately, this is the story of my journey into Self. It became necessary for me to fall in love with the mystery of my own being. My experiences with the mushroom medicine have cultivated an intimate relationship with Mother Earth and a coterie of spirit beings. Through the use of sacred mushrooms, I have experienced an expansion of consciousness I never thought possible. It has deepened my sense of belonging within a vast universe of countless realms. This medicine is a potent portal into the world of the spirits,” she writes in the introduction. Shonagh forms a unique relationship with the spirit world that has been made possible through her mushroom journeys. Like many traditional shamans through the ages, she finds herself to be a conduit for Spirit, thereby bringing through wisdom and guidance for herself and her community. She is eventually led into a very ancient practice as a “medicine oracle,” and her life is forever changed. Love and Spirit Medicine is an unusual love story; a tale that exemplifies what is possible through the reverent use of plant medicine for healing and transcendence on every level of our being. It’s the story of a woman who ultimately discovers her journey is not about finding a soul mate, but coming to know and love her own soul.

Sisters Kat and Nell Sinclair board a train westward to a Colorado mining town as mail-order brides, but when neither of their fiancés are there to pick them up from the station, Kat and Nell find themselves on their own in rugged, frontier town.

Presenting an outline of the four necessary steps for meeting suffering with compassion, this insightful book shows how to build a capacity for compassion into the structures and practices of an organization. --

In the veiled and shadowed history of the West there rides a mysterious horseman. His headless shoulders testify to his death at the hands of the law—in a state that forbade Mexicans like him to own property. A state that turned a deaf ear to the rape and murder of the horseman’s beautiful young wife. This is the Ghost of Sonora. Was he man or myth? Was Joaquin Murieta the Napoleon of Banditry, as the California Rangers have charged, or El Patrio, the great liberator of the Mexicans of California? Here is his story. You make the decision. Dead Man's Revenge The poor and oppressed of old California cheer Joaquin Murieta as El Patrio, the great liberator. The wealthy and powerful call him simply "the smiling bandit." Officials dispatch rangers to kill the popular outlaw and bring his head back to them as proof. But justice does not die so easily. Now out of the darkness there rides a mysterious horseman - a headless specter bent on taking his revenge.

Explores the resounding musical performances of Mexican American women such as Chelo Silva, Eva Ybarra, Eva Garza, and Selena within Tejano/Chicano music

The Tucson Kid is sentenced to death when he's accused of murder after killing a man in a gunfight. He's bought out of his sentence by a woman who has a job for him. A bandit is holding something over her father, and she asks Tucson to infiltrate his gang to discover what it is. Tucson is pitted alone against the outlaws and must face the bandit chief in a battle to the death.

Two families, one solidly middle-class American and the other undocumented Mexican immigrants, face an uncertain future. No ones job is safe, and no paycheck is ever guaranteed. They both live in a maelstrom of uncertainty. The rule of law has yielded to the flux of opportunism. While the OConnell family struggles with an arrogant boss and adolescent upheavals, the Riveras cope with fear of the cartels and worries over deportation and teenage missteps. Despite initial misgivings and differences, the two families unite at least for a while, but how long will that while last?