IDENTITIES IN A MODERN WORLD

Black Powder White Lace: The du Pont Irish and Cultural Identity in Nineteenth- Century America. By Margaret M. Mulrooney. Hanover and London: University of New Hampshire Press, 2002. xi + 296 pp. Maps, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography, and index. $65.00 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

First To Fight. By Henry Mihesuah. Edited by Devon Abbott Mihesuah. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002. xviii + 101 pp. Illustrations, notes, photos, bibliography, and index. $26.95.

The Medicine of Memory: A Mexica Clan in California. By Alejandro Murguia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. xiv + 228 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $50.00 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

Sherry L. Smith
Southern Methodist University

At first glance one might expect these books to have little in common. What could possibly connect a scholarly monograph on nineteenth-century Irish immigrants, a twentieth-century Comanche autobiography, and a work of "creative nonfiction" by a self-defined member of a "Mexica" clan? Yet they share several themes: encounters with modernity, the crucial role of family in shaping cultural identities, and the processes by which individuals negotiate a place for themselves which reflects both a measure of incorporation into the dominant world and retention of (in these cases) Irish, Comanche or Mexican culture.