Short Take: Latinas A to Z

An unusual encyclopedia published this year fills gaps in two fields: women’s studies and Latino history. Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia (Indiana U. Press) is the result of a seven-year collaboration between Vicki L. Ruiz, MA ’78, PhD ’82, and Virginia Sánchez-Korrol. With nearly 600 entries by some 200 writers, the three-volume set records the contributions to U.S. cultural and economic life of women in the country’s largest minority group, covering areas from science to arts, religion to politics. Three hundred photographs illustrate the text. The encyclopedia has another distinctive feature: roughly a third of its biographical entries chronicle ordinary women who made a difference to their communities but remained unknown to the wider public. Ruiz teaches history and Chicano/Latino studies at UC-Irvine; Sánchez-Korrol is a history professor at Brooklyn College.