Patricia Zavella

Patricia Zavella is an American anthropologist and professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Latin American and Latino Studies department. She has spent a career advancing Latina and Chicana feminism through her scholarship, teaching, and activism. She was president of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists and has served on the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. In 2016, Zavella received the American Anthropological Association's award from the Committee on Gender Equity in Anthropology to recognize her career studying gender discrimination. In 1968, Zavella went to Chaffey Community College in Alta Loma, near her family's home. There she was influenced by both Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez and became involved with the Chicano/a movement. She became a student activist, supporting some of the first classes in Mexican-American studies. Her recollections of the early days of the movement are a vital part of this oral history. In August 1970, Zavella participated in the Chicano Moratorium along with approximately 25,000 other activists who protested in East Los Angeles against the Vietnam War. She began to claim an identity as a Chicana when she joined MECA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán].

Zavella completed her BA in anthropology at Pitzer College. Afterward, she attended graduate school at UC Berkeley, where she earned her PhD in anthropology in 1982. 1980: Lecturer, Chicano Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley

Publications

Publications The Impact of "Sun Belt Industrialization" on Chicanas, 1984 Work-related Networks and Household Organization Among Chicana Cannery Workers, 1984 Women's Work and Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley, 1987 Sunbelt Working Mothers: Reconciling Family and Factory, 1993 Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life, 1997 Policy Implications of the Restructuring of Frozen Food Production in North America and Its Impact on Watsonville, California, 1999 , 2000 Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, 2007 Mexicans in California: Transformations and Challenges, 2009 I'm Neither Here Nor There: Mexicans' Quotidian Struggles with Migration and Poverty, 2011 The Movement for Reproductive Justice: Empowering Women of Color through Social Activism

Translations

Co-authored with Rebecca Gámez and Denise Segura, "Transborder Families and Trajectories of Migration and Work", translation of "Familias Transfronterizas y Trayectorias de Migración y Trabajo" by Norma Ojeda de la Peña, in Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, Eds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 327–340. Co-authored with Rebecca Gámez and Denise Segura, "The Migration of Women and Household Survival Strategies: A Case Study of Mixtec Women in Tijuana" translation of "Migración Femenina y Estrategias de Sobrevivencia de la Unidad Doméstica: Un Caso de Estudio de Mujeres Mixtecas en Tijuana" by Laura Velasco Ortiz, in Women and Migration in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands: A Reader, Denise A. Segura and Patricia Zavella, Eds. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007, pp. 341–359.