Book Review: Peiss, Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style , by Lori A. Flores Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style by Kathy Peiss Review by: Lori A. Flores Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 82, No. 4 (November 2013), pp. 601-602 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/phr.2013.82.4.601 . Accessed: 05/09/2015 18:03

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This content downloaded from 129.49.5.35 on Sat, 5 Sep 2015 18:03:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Reviews of Books 601 he acknowledges the numerous variables that shape legal testimony, his exclusive reliance on court documents renders an account that has likely been mediated by the state and the hand of white, male institutions. One might wonder to what extent such strategic profes- sions of sexual respectability and conformity to colonial norms were also articulations of Catholic belief and/or expressions of Mexican, not American, cultural mores? Still, amidst a growing body of research focused on the stigmatization of Mexicans in the early twentieth century, West of Sex uncovers not-so-hidden transcripts of opposition and offers an important reply to stories of victimization. In so doing, Pablo Mitchell has reframed the narrative of Mexican American political struggle and deepened our understanding of sex and citizenship in American history. University of Califronia, Irvine, History Project CATHERINE CHRISTENSEN

Zoot Suit: The Enigmatic Career of an Extreme Style.ByKathyPeiss. (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 238 pp. $24.95 cloth, $24.95 digital)

No era in American history has passed without some form of clothing becoming controversial. Kathy Peiss takes on the zoot suit of the 1940s—a long draped coat and oversized trousers tapered at the ankle, often paired with a flashy watch chain and hat—to offer a genealogy of a trend. Posing the question ‘‘When should aesthetic and cultural forms be seen as political?’’ Peiss challenges scholars’ tendency to automatically characterize zoot suiters—who were mainly, but not exclusively, Mexican and African American—as political beings, consciously rebelling against World War II-era cloth rationing and racial discrimination (p. 9). In trying to disentangle the significance that zoot suit-wearers placed on their own dress from the political consciousness attrib- uted to them by others, Peiss retells familiar stories featuring the Georgia busboy who supposedly ordered the first zoot suit in 1940, young zooters turned civil rights icons Malcolm X and C´esar Ch´avez, and Los Angeles’s violent ‘‘Zoot Suit Riots’’ of June 1943. What is different is Peiss’s skepticism about zoot suiters’ political intentions. Many Mexican, African, and Filipino American youth may have sim- ply liked the ‘‘cool’’ aesthetic of the suit, she argues, and not neces- sarily regarded it as a stylistic weapon that would increase their visibility as citizen-consumers in a society that continued to margin- alize and discriminate against them.

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While Peiss is certainly right that we must not assume every zoot suiter was acting politically through his or her dress, her book leaves us with more questions than answers. She never explicitly states her own definition of ‘‘political’’ and what it includes. Women appear in only a few paragraphs’ discussion of ‘‘pachucas’’ and lesbians. She falls short of her ostensible goal of clearly distinguishing the men- tality of those who wore the suit from those who analyzed the trend. This is a source problem, both in terms of a paucity of zoot suiters’ firsthand accounts and Peiss’s own missed opportunities. Citing extensively from urban East Coast and Los Angeles newspapers, she fails to make use of the unique leads she does find in small towns and rural spaces. A substantial counterpoint to Los Angeles would have produced sharper analysis of why the zoot suit provoked con- flict in that particular city and offered a refreshing break from the literature’s continued focus on the urban. It will be the job of forth- coming studies, including my own on California’s Salinas Valley, to provide histories of the zoot suit outside the metropolis. What this book offers is a history of the zoot suit’s evolution into a symbol and its impact upon the field of cultural studies, but not a deep understanding of the person inside the suit; readers expect- ing the latter will be disappointed. Peiss’s work shines, however, in two areas—its compilation of zoot suit images and illustrations and its last chapter, ‘‘Zooting Around the World,’’ which describes other places where zoot culture manifested. Her discussion of French zazous, black South African tsotsis, Hungarian jampec, Polish bikiniarze, and Russian stiliagi will no doubt spark further interesting research. At the very least, what Peiss’s work demonstrates is that the zoot suit remains somewhat of an enigma that will not go out of fashion as a subject of historical inquiry anytime soon. State University of New York, Stony Brook LORI A. FLORES

From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement. By Matt Garcia. (Berkeley, University of Ca- lifornia Press, 2012. xvi þ 350 pp. $34.95)

People remember C´esar Ch´avez as a kind of secular saint, an iconic figure who uplifted the most wretched of America’s workers with speeches, marches, rallies, fasts, and especially consumer boycotts. This view was confirmed by the federal government, which on October 8, 2012, established the C´esar E. Ch´avez NationalMonument near Keene, California. It is the complex known as La Paz, consisting of the Ch´avez

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