Dancing with the Devil

the primacy of the Church; the "superstitious" character of Mexicans; the unquestioned rule of "anglos"; the "natural" submissiveness of women; the monolithic character of Mexican culture itself (x).

This personal background melded with his educational training at the University of Texas at Austin, the UCLA Chicano Studies Center, the Stanford University Humanities Center, and other universities and grant programs which furthered his education and allowed him to develop and complete this fascinating book.

Limon's book is unique because he makes himself, his life, and his passions, along with the lives and passions of his subjects, the center of his work. He seeks to understand in this work the culture of Mexican-Americans in South Texas as a culture and as a part of the larger white culture which dominates the Mexican-American culture. Because he approaches the study with his eye focused on the "poetics" of culture, Limon's work includes a great variety of topics, as does "poetics" itself, as Limon writes:

. . . A key interpretive concept in my subtitle--"cultural poetics" or the "poetics of culture"--referring to act

. . .
he "poetics" he describes and studies. In historical terms, the roots of the book go back as far as the previous century: "In 1846, the United States initiated the successful campaign under the command of Zachary Taylor that eventually resulted in the American incorporation of the Southwest, including the South Texas area and its resident mexicanos" (22). However, even when making more distant historical references, Limon focuses not primarily on overriding issues of macrohistory, but rather on individual lives which were marked and shaped by those historical events and forces. Limon primarily studies the culture in terms of its evolution in the last two decades: In the shadow and light of those who have written before me, I have entered Mexican-American south Texas at my own unique point and moment in the 1970s. . . . Therein I have critiqued what I have termed an emergent subaltern postmodernity experienced in race and class terms but having its most telling impact on the lives of working-class women (206-207). The book is activist in spirit, rather than passive as many such works are which merely analyze without becoming passionately involved in the culture under study. Limon is a member of the culture he studies, howe
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
South Texas, Catholic Church, Social Poetry, War II, Humanities Center, Americo Paredes, Zachary Taylor, south texas, cultural poetics, mexican-american culture, Madison Wisconsin, dancing devil, dance devil, culture limon, Dancing Devil, mexican-american south texas, music dancing, dynamic culture, popular music, post-world war ii, post-world war, culture south texas, popular music dancing, mexican-american culture south,
Approximate Word count = 1455
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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