Developing our collection of books from Mexico remains my priority as the newly appointed librarian for Latin American and the Caribbean Studies at UC Berkeley. I believe that Mexico, its cultural production, and colleagues have played an extremely important role in my life. Growing up, I had heard stories about one of the Indian anarchists /revolutionaries Mr. Pandurang Kankhoje living and working in Mexico in the 1920s. While most of the stories seemed more close to the narratives of the early Indic mythology, my own journey in the field of Latin American Studies was inspired by these early stories. I now realize that not all stories that seem to be mythological are fictions. There are realities embedded within these narratives that one can learn through a historical lens.
As I started to work as the librarian for Latin America at UC Berkeley, I began to also think about my early days in the racist Los Angeles, where the solace was in las fiestas and the invitations from a close-knit community of Mexican, other Latin American workers with whom I interacted on daily basis. Not a single time, I felt that as an Indian immigrant, I was an outsider. Since then Mexico and its culture have remained an object of affect and admiration. As a librarian here, I have sworn to develop the best possible collection of materials on behalf of our faculty and students. I believe that Mexican imprints that can circulate and used by faculty and students are an important cornerstone of my collection development policies at UC Berkeley. Please see the images of the recent important books from Mexico that we have purchased. These will be made available to our audiences upon their cataloging in Doe Library. Please click on the image below to get access to all of the photos of our new purchases from Mexico.
