Your next choice, Chicanos en Mictlan by Tere Romo, looks not only at Californian celebrations but also at how pre-Columbian spiritual practices influenced Chicano altar-making.
Tere Romo is one of the foundational Chicano artists who were active in bringing Day of the Dead celebrations to the United States. She is an artist and a curator. In my book, I interview almost a hundred different Chicano artists and activists, like Tere, who started to hold these Day of the Dead celebrations in art galleries and schools in the US.
They first began in Latino art galleries in California and the southwest. But then the celebrations became popular and spread to galleries and museums across the country. Today, Day of the Dead altars are considered a form of art. You have celebrations with music, dancing and food happening in museums like the Smithsonian or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A lot of major museums around the world have embraced this as a beautiful cultural form with artistic merit”
—Regina Marchi, Five Books interview on the Day of the Dead, November 2011 (updated in September 2022. Note: this book is now very hard to get hold of).
Your next choice, Chicanos en Mictlan by Tere Romo, looks not only at Californian celebrations but also at how pre-Columbian spiritual practices influenced Chicano altar-making.
Tere Romo is one of the foundational Chicano artists who were active in bringing Day of the Dead celebrations to the United States. She is an artist and a curator. In my book, I interview almost a hundred different Chicano artists and activists, like Tere, who started to hold these Day of the Dead celebrations in art galleries and schools in the US.
They first began in Latino art galleries in California and the southwest. But then the celebrations became popular and spread to galleries and museums across the country. Today, Day of the Dead altars are considered a form of art. You have celebrations with music, dancing and food happening in museums like the Smithsonian or the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A lot of major museums around the world have embraced this as a beautiful cultural form with artistic merit”
—Regina Marchi, Five Books interview on the Day of the Dead, November 2011 (updated in September 2022. Note: this book is now very hard to get hold of).
Regina Marchi, Social Scientist