Column: In 2024, books by and about Southern California Latinas shined

The Mujeres de Aztlán mural, painted in 1976, in the Ramona Gardens housing project as seen in 2020. Thankfully, Portland State professor Cristina Herrera gives Serros the literary respect she deserves with “Welcome to Oxnard: Race, Place, and Chicana Adolescence in Michele Serros’s Writings.” Herrera analyzes Serros’ major works — the collections “Chicana Falsa” and “How to Be a Chicano Role Model” and the young adult novel “Honey Blond Chica.” The professor effectively argues for Serros’ significance as a Latina intellectual but also as a Southern California chronicler, while mixing in her own Oxnard coming-of-age story, including her “deep sense of shame” that she didn’t know about Serros’ work until graduate school, even though their extended families were friends. “Chicana writers have a long tradition of exploring their home regions in relation to growing up,” Herrera writes, “particularly in cases where coming-of-age coincides with writing styles that rupture literary conventions” — a perfect analysis of Serros, but just as applicable to “Welcome to Oxnard.” Cover to “Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis,” by members of the East L.A. women’s collective. Another format buster is “Mujeres de Maiz en Movimiento: Spiritual Artivism, Healing Justice, and Feminist Praxis,” an anthology by members of the East Los Angeles-based women’s collective, now in its 27th year. Some of those local pioneers are examined in “Chicana Liberation: Women and Mexican American Politics in Los Angeles, 1945-1981.” Despite the title, Cal State Dominguez Hills professor Marisela R. Chávez mostly eschews Latina elected officials in favor of mujeres who worked in community groups ranging from the Communist Party to the Mexican American Political Association to the Comisión Femenil Mexicana Nacional, co-founded by the late Chicana political powerhouse Gloria Molina.