Announcing a new book by Marie-Theresa Hernandez

Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire: Unearthing Deep South Narratives in a Texas Graveyard


In 2001, before I ever thought of starting a blog I was already working on a research project about a cemetery in southeast Texas. In 2000 I completed a book on northern Mexico (published in 2002)- which turned out to be fairly interesting - but as often happens to writers, I wasn't sure I could write another good book. But somehow or another I was able to do it. The second book was just released this month.

I call it the "cemetery book," but the official title is Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire. It is about a cemetery near Houston designated for Latino workers employed by the Imperial Sugar Company* (Sugar Land Industries). The story ended up being much more complicated than I initially imagined. The cemetery was on land that had been an antebellum sugar plantation. Before that, it belonged to Stephen F. Austin, who is known as the "Father of Texas." After the civil war it became a cemetery for prisoners when Texas prison system rented laborers out to the plantation.

Now the cemetery sits in the middle of suburbia. The whole thing makes for an interesting story - probably worth reading (if I must say so myself); if you want to learn about Texas history, plantations, slavery, and Mexican labor working in the fields of Imperial Sugar.


Cemeteries of Ambivalent Desire: Unearthing Deep South Narratives in a Texas Graveyard
by Marie-Theresa Hernandez
252 pages, Texas A&M University Press (March 2008)
ISBN-10: 1603440267
ISBN-13: 978-1603440264


*Imperial Sugar owns the sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, GA that exploded on Friday(Feb. 8). See NYT article that states the "property, which extends from the Coastal Highway to the Savannah River, resembles a Southern plantation, with a low white fence and the warehouses barely visible behind oak trees dripping with Spanish moss. The factory was aging, workers said, but was sustained by its advantageous location, with access to trains and ships."


for link to the publishers web site click the title of this post



for link to NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/us/09sugar.html?scp=2&sq=port+wentworth&st=nyt