"A sophisticated and intricate narrative about the foundational history of Spanish in the United States, as well as the history of ethnic Mexican U.S. citizens (treaty citizens, Mexican immigrants, and U.S.–born citizens of Mexican descent)."—Journal of Arizona History
"Con este título la profesora Lozano hace una valiosa aportación al estudio de la historia de los hispanohablantes en el sur de los Estados Unidos, analizando su contexto político y social. La autora ha demostrado con este trabajo tan revelador que se pueden abrir nuevos caminos dentro de esa fructífera vía, aún poco investigada."—Journal of the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
"Lozano has made a strong case for language as a tool for expressing power. . . . In sum, the author succeeds at illuminating the dynamic history of Spanish language rights in the United States. And, in the process she also offers an important corrective to the notion of a monolingual national politic."—Latino Book Review
"An American Language has breadth and vision. . . . [and] the implications of its findings surely reach to our day."—Latin American Research Review
“Original and provocative, beautifully written and argued,
An American Language tells a story of our nation’s past that brilliantly illuminates our present: that the United States of America was born multilingual.”—John Mack Faragher, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus, Yale University
“In this timely and important book, Rosina Lozano reveals that little is as all-American as the Spanish language.
An American Language opens up a whole new way of envisioning the century that followed the U.S.-Mexican War and introduces a powerful new scholarly voice.”—Karl Jacoby, author of
The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire “Lozano has given us an original and imaginative story of contests over power, governance, and belonging that places language—and the Spanish language in particular—at the center of her analysis. In so doing, she offers a new and rich perspective on the development of the American Southwest since the middle of the nineteenth century, on the deeper meanings of American culture and politics, and on the complex ways in which citizenship is constructed.”—Steven Hahn, author of
A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910 “This deeply original history explains how Spanish speakers in the United States interacted with government power in the century after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
An American Language has something novel and urgent to say about identity, pluralism, and the state. Lozano has written an ambitious and important book.”—Brian DeLay, author of
War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War “This book is a tour de force with powerfully important implications. It definitively refutes reigning assumptions that the United States has always been a monolingual Anglophone nation and that recent and current immigration poses an unprecedented threat through its language diversity. Lozano presents detailed accounts of the historical role of Spanish as a state-sanctioned language and demonstrates how this was an important crucible of identity and power in the U.S. past.
An American Language reveals a hidden history of the Spanish language in the United States.”—George Lipsitz, author of
How Racism Takes Place