[A] fascinating, almost cinematic book...Gordon has brilliantly
retrieved history, in the process providing a vivid, complex
addition to the growing scholarship on 'whiteness.'--JoAnn
Wypijewski "Lingua Franca Book Review "
[Gordon] uses the plight of the children...to introduce her readers
to the racial, social and cultural situation in the Arizona minds
and in the country in general.--William R. Wineke"Wisconsin State
Journal" (10/08/2000)
Economics, religion, and racial and sexual politics intersect in
this fascinating account of the social upheaval caused when
Mexicans in a small Arizona mining town in 1904 adopted 40
abandoned Irish-Catholic children from New York. The children were
brought West by Catholic nuns on the little-known orphan trains
that transported children of poor families across the country for
adoption. Gordon has rendered a well-researched analysis of the
social and racial factors that aroused passions enough to send
posses to 'rescue' the children and that nearly lead to the
lynching of a priest. Gordon puts the incident in the context of
turn-of-the-century industrialization and changing racial
definitions that reclassified ethnic groups, such as the Irish as
whites. Gordon uses news accounts and court transcripts to render a
compelling account of the incident and the legal challenges by the
Catholic charity group that went all the way to the U. S. Supreme
Court and ended in judgement in favor of t
Gordon demonstrates the continuing vitality of the issues social
historians have brought to the table - class, race, gender, family
- in the context of a new commitment to a synthesizing
narrative...Gordon's invocations of the many issues that have
concerned social historians deeply enhances her examination of a
particular time and place in this richly re-imagined
history...Gordon has gone to such pains to guard the integrity of
her historical subjects and to invest then with genuine depth and
individuality.--Paula S. Fass "American Historical Review "
Gordon is genuinely curious and deeply thoughtful about the complex
ways in which race, class and gender intersect to produce pivotal
moments like this one. The book that she has written should be of
interest not only to scholars of the American southwest, but to
anyone curious about how ideologies make us what we are.--Christina
Thompson "Times Higher Education Supplement "
Gordon's account takes place in six scenes, with historical
interludes between them. Her narrative voice is enticing, and her
descriptions vivid...This book provides a gripping piece of a
puzzled history, not only of American racism, but of the Catholic
experience of it.--Peggy Ellsberg"Commonweal" (12/01/2000)
Gordon's extraordinary achievement in this book lies in her
narrative strategy as much as in her insights as a social
historian: she alternates dramatic short chapters detailing the
events in the mining communities of Clifton-Morenci from the first
to the fourth of October 1904 with longer, denser ones that
reconstruct the conflation of class, gender, racial, religious, and
economic interests that initiated the children's journey west from
New York City and underlay their distribution by Father Mandin, the
local priest.--Gay Wachman "Women's Review of Books "
Historian Linda Gordon has unearthed a small, forgotten story, and
told it exceptionally well...[The] astonishing story, less than a
century old, contains much to ponder. Gordon does a masterful job
probing class and race, gender and religion, family and border
economics to shed light on conflicts unresolved to this day...She
has crafted both an exhilarating yarn and a sober morality
tale.--Karen R. Long "Plain Dealer "
If Gordon's book did nothing more than redeem from obscurity the
story of the Arizona orphans, it would be an extraordinary
contribution to social history. But Gordon has gone beyond that
scanty written record, mainly from the court proceedings, to
explore the motives of the Mexican and Anglo women...Gordon's
achievement is that she so effectively and fair-mindedly delved
into the site and unearthed this appalling and poignant
story.--Michael Kenney "Boston Globe "
In her gripping book, "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction", Linda
Gordon has written a model study of the creation and maintenance of
race relations that manages to capture both the breathless
sensationalism of the era's tabloids and the complexity of social
status, shifting racial codes and the multiple uses of sex roles in
social action...Gordon divides her story into six scenes, most of
them devoted to some portion of the four days when the orphans'
arrival engulfed Clifton-Morenci in a near riot followed by a mass
kidnapping. Spliced between each scene is the history--long-term
and proximate--of the towns' sociocultural landscape. It is an
ingenious narrative device that enables her to reconstitute the
distinct social structures of the area while rendering a taut
journalistic account of the unfolding drama...The magnificence of
her achievement [is] her masterly assembly of historical detail and
acute sensitivity to the intricacies of human relations as mediated
by power, prejudice
In this remarkable history of an obscure event, Gordon skillfully
casts light on myriad important subjects...[She] has done an
extraordinary amount of research and has completely contextualized
the orphan abduction. One finds learned chapters on the history of
the Southwest, the copper mining industry, vigilantism, Mexican
women, labor relations, and Catholicism. Especially informative are
Gordon's lengthy discussions of historical definitions of whiteness
and how the orphan abduction was instrumental in destroying the
fluidity of race relations.--E. W. Carp "Choice "
In 1904, a group of New York nuns delivered 40 mostly Irish but
entirely Catholic orphans to a remote Arizona mining town to be
adopted by local Catholics. What happened next is the subject of
historian Linda Gordon's compelling new book: For their act of
Christian charity, the nuns were rewarded with near-lynching and
public vilification of an intensity hard to fathom today. As Gordon
makes clear in writing so alive it makes the reader smell sagebrush
and white supremacy, the Eastern nuns didn't realize that, in
turn-of-the-century Arizona, Catholic also meant Mexican, and
Mexican meant inferior.--Debra Dickerson "salon.com "
It is both fascinating and disturbing to delve into specific events
of American history: Cultural biases explode, exploitation simmers,
and religious identity is challenged. Linda Gordon's book confronts
all these issues...Delving deeper and deeper into the American
conscience, Gordon shatters layer upon layer of assumption. She has
done her research, and the story she has written breathes life as a
dragon breathes fire, burning sometimes accidentally, though
oftentimes intentionally. As a challenge to preconceived notions of
American history, as a reflection of cultural, religious and
economic realities and as a how-to guide for retrieving important
historical lessons, "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction" is
fascinating, repelling and completely engrossing.--Ian Graham "The
Star-Ledger "
Linda Gordon has used [the orphan abduction's] events to explore
issues of race, gender, class, economics and theories of the family
in a beautifully constructed narrative and analysis of a flashpoint
in American domestic history...Gordon uses her multiplicity of
sources with great skill, all the time reminding us that some
participants in the story have left no record of their experiences,
particularly the children's birth mothers, the children themselves,
and the Mexican families with whom they were to be placed. She
contextualises the event superbly, giving us a well-rounded
portrait of Clifton-Morenci at the time, as well as taking us
through the ideological and emotional processes which moved people
to act as they did.--Catriona Crowe "Irish Times "
Linda Gordon has written an astonishing book...This is not just a
story about orphan children: it is a story of America at a time of
transition, when the railroads were opening up the land and men
went west from the cities of the eastern seaboard to seek their
fortune. It details religious prejudice, but also
compassion.--Christina White"Catholic Herald" (10/12/2001)
Linda Gordon...has produced a brilliant foray into social history
that explores issues of race, class, gender, law enforcement, and
labor relations in the American Southwest at the dawn of the 20th
century.--Gregory J. W. Urwin"Journal of the West" (04/01/2004)
Linda Gordon's "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction" is a
spellbinding narrative history--the kind of rigorous but engaging
work that other academics dream of writing. Gordon here unearths a
long forgotten story about abandoned Irish-Catholic children in
turn-of-the-century New York who were sent out to Arizona to be
adopted by good Catholic families. The hitch was that those
families turned out to be dark-skinned Mexicans. What ensued was a
custody battle that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The
astonishing story Gordon has recovered considers vexed intellectual
questions about race, class and gender in a dramatic, accessible
fashion.--Maureen Corrigan"Newsday" (12/31/2000)
These painstakingly researched chapters could well stand on their
own as a powerful history of the miners' lives and a superior case
study of emigrant labor at the turn of the century.--Duncan Stewart
"Library Journal "
This is an unusual and interesting work of history, whose chief
strength lies in the way it lovingly recreates the spirit of a
particular Arizona community and, through its insistence on
micro-historical detail, gives the reader a clear sense of how
racial assumptions and antagonisms operated within everyday
life.--Paul Giles "Times Literary Supplement "
Written in the lush prose and plots of a Joseph Conrad novel, Linda
Gordon's "The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction" is [an] extraordinary
chronicle...More than an isolated case of frontier vigilantism, the
affair swirled into the national headlines, fanning the flames of
the caustic debate over religion and race...Peeling off the
overlapping intrigues, issues, and players of the incident with the
precision of a historical detective, Gordon, a leading social
historian on issues of gender and family, goes far beyond the
question of blatant racism in a racist epoch to examine the
cultural and historical makeup that allowed the affair to happen in
the first place...Her meticulously researched and reasoned
chronicle is a masterwork of historical analysis that deserves to
remain on bookshelves far into the future.--Jeff Biggers
"Bloomsbury Review "
ÝA¨ fascinating, almost cinematic book...Gordon has brilliantly
retrieved history, in the process providing a vivid, complex
addition to the growing scholarship on 'whiteness.' -- JoAnn
Wypijewski "Lingua Franca Book Review"
A story of racism, vigilantism, and injustice that retains its grim
fascination after nearly a century...The sordid but suspenseful
story is told against a background that encompasses the mining
industry, labor unions and even a waffling U.S. Supreme Court.
Gordon, drawing on interviews, newspapers, and the court
transcript, recreates the kidnapping and the ensuing courtroom
drama in intoxicating detail. Along the way, Gordon cracks open a
number of hot issues, from labor relations to women's roles. At the
center is her examination of the social construction of race; you
won't find a more illuminating or nuanced discussion of the
invention of whiteness than Gordon's...Gordon has written the rare
history book that readers won't be able to put down.
Linda Gordon has used Ýthe orphan abduction's¨ events to explore
issues of race, gender, class, economics and theories of the family
in a beautifully constructed narrative and analysis of a flashpoint
in American domestic history...Gordon uses her multiplicity of
sources with great skill, all the time reminding us that some
participants in the story have left no record of their experiences,
particularly the children's birth mothers, the children themselves,
and the Mexican families with whom they were to be placed. She
contextualises the event superbly, giving us a well-rounded
portrait of Clifton-Morenci at the time, as well as taking us
through the ideological and emotional processes which moved people
to act as they did. -- Catriona Crowe "Irish Times"
Linda Gordon... has produced a brilliant foray into social history
that explores issues of race, class, gender, law enforcement, and
labor relations in the American Southwest at the dawn of the 20th
century. -- Gregory J. W. Urwin "Journal of the West" (04/01/2004)
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