A Story of Stories: The Texas Border Barrio Life and Writings of Doña Ramona González

One afternoon in fall 2015 Cristina Devereaux Ramírez’s mother called and, with a tone of urgency in her voice, asked her to come to the house and take a look at something she had discovered when she was sorting through boxes in the attic. When Ramírez arrived, she found her family sifting through papers in an old vegetable box, reading some of the more than 750 pages of Spanish language poems, short stories, fables, and dichos Ramírez’s maternal grandmother, Ramona González, had written. Some pieces were works in progress, complete with word and phrase strikethroughs and handwritten notes in the margins, while others were neatly typed prose or what might have been final drafts. None of González’s writings had seen the outside of that box for decades, at least since 1995 when the family matriarch passed away. González—or Doña Ramona, as she was often called—was born in 1906 in the El Paso border barrio of Chihuahuita, sometimes referred to as the Ellis Island of the Southwest. Her writing celebrates the rich Mexican American culture of Chihuahuita, a neighborhood the National Trust for Historic Preservation identified in 2016 as one of America’s most endangered historic places. A mother, corner grocery store owner, published writer, and community activist, González was one of the few Tejanas profiled in Worthy Mothers of Texas, 1776–1976 A Story of Stories from a Texas Border Barrio, Ramírez chronicles the life of her abuela with the care of a granddaughter and, with the eye of a scholar, analyzes selections from González’s work and its significance to El Paso history, Chicano literature, border barrio folklore, and cross-border civic movements in the mid-twentieth century.

Table of Contents:
Table of Contents Prologue 4 Introduction 10 Chapter One A Trenza of Voices 16 Chapter Two Un cuento de cuentos: A Story of Stories 33 Chapter Three Recovering the Fading History of a Far West Texas Border Barrio: Chihauhuita 60 Cuentos del barrio: Stories from the barrio, Part I 87 Por vida de estas santas cruces yo viví en estos barrios by Ramona González 89 By the life of these holy crosses I lived in these barrios English translation by Neil Devereaux 139 Chapter Four González Grocery: El corazón del barrio 192 Cuentos del barrio: Stories from the barrio, Part II 204 Mi Tiendita by Ramona González 206 My Little Store English translation by Neil Devereaux 246 Chapter Five Doña Ramona’s Barrio Literacy: Poems and Fables for Children 288 El Sol (The Sun) 293 El vuelo (The Flight) 295 El Pájaro Cenzontle y e1 Conde (The Mocking Bird and the Count) 296 Acknowledgements 299 Bibliography 300 Notes 305 Prologue