Chicana Adolescents: Bitches, 'Ho's, and Schoolgirls

By Lisa C. Dietrich

An examination of the cultural values of working class Chicana adolescents with an emphasis on the social, political, and economic factors that shape these cultural values. This book addresses a gap in the literature on youth gangs and youth culture by examining the motivations and issues of gang affiliation, teen pregnancy, and academic failure from the point-of-view of teenage girls. Furthermore, the book emphasizes female participation in gangs as well as the impact that gangs have on non- participating adolescents. The author also discusses how current public policy is based on erroneous assumptions associated with the culture of poverty model.

This book attempts to explain what appears to be self-defeating behavior of many Chicana adolescents. It explores the logic underlying their life choices and examines the connection between these choices and larger social processes. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as faculty in ethnic studies, multicultural studies, Hispanic Studies, Sociology, and Women's Studies. In addition social service professionals and related professionals will find it helpful.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0275961540
• ISBN13: 9780275961541
• Release Date: April 1998
• Publisher: Praeger
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A Look into a New World of Youth Cuture

Lisa Dietrich explores how culture, socioeconomic factors, sub-standard education and poor educational values are forces that can work against the developing Latina adolescent in the book about her fieldwork, CHICANA ADOLESCENTS: .... Dietrich is an anthropologist who immersed herself in a predominately Mexican neighborhood to study the issues and concerns of adolescent Latina girls. Dietrich's work has produced invaluable evidence which can serve to help educators to at least begin to understand how there are significant differences between being an adolescent Latina versus an adolescent Anglo, or even African American. There is no doubt that their search for identity is complex. Dietrich's book initially describes how she was able to "infiltrate" this youth culture as a twenty-nine-year-old white woman. The aspects that validates her research is that she was honest about her work with the girls. She did not try to place herself "undercover" and become an adolescent again, or try to assume an ethnic role that was not her own. Dietrich began the process by volunteering at the local high school in the community, and it is here that she met and connected with some young women who wanted help with school-work or simply wanted rides to a party, the movies, the mall or a dance. This approach did two important things. First, it allowed the young women to trust her; they knew from the beginnng she was an adult who was conducting research and was not lying to them. Second, it gives the work as a whole a strong foundation in honesty because Dietrich did not have to go between roles because her role remained constant, an anthropologist conducting research. Once she gained the trust of the young adults she was working with, she had a wonderful opportunity to truly analyze in detail the thinking hat goes on in the minds of these enigmatic adolescents. What makes Dietrich's work so important is the cador with which she presents her findings. She delves into the tough issues: poverty, gang affiliation, teenage pregancy, drug addiction and parental neglect just to name a few. Dietrich looks at these issues simultaneously through her eyes, as an educated woman, and the eyes of the young women who are living with these challenges everyday. In a sense, she has given a voice to a group of young women who would have never had a chance to voice their ideas, opinions and feelings about these emotionally charged topics. In fact, Dietrich points out that the girls could not even believe that someone wanted to dedicate an entire book to studying them, and many volunteered to be interviewed. Lisa Dietrich has done an outstanding job providing insights into a world that for many seems a million miles away. When one reads this book, she will not have all of the answers to solve these problems, but she will walk away with a better understanding of how the value systems of young adolescent Latina woman works, and the conflicts she faces as a minority women in m