Summary Of The Great Arizona Orphan Abduction

Linda Gordon, a renowned historian at the University of Wisconsin, in her amazing book, Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, recreates history, giving accounts of the struggles of American Mexican immigrants of the 1900s. Using a wide range of research skills and evidence produced from real excerpts from the time and court proceedings, Gordon creates a vivid view of the plight faced by the church and its leaders in the 1900s. She tried to restrain the people from thinking along racial lines and descending into what is now worldwide abhorred vice, of racial and ethnic discrimination . The strength of Gordon’s book based on the quality of the arguments, the strength of the literary style, and the central theme makes it an outstanding book making its

Around this time, New York nuns brought in 40 Irish orphans to one mining camp in Arizona to stay with Catholic families in the locality a move that was not kindly received by the rest of the Anglos. The underlying perception at the time in Arizona was that Anglos could not mingle freely with any immigrants as they were considered people of colour an understanding that raised racial discrimination to great heights in all operations within the community . Owing to this, the Anglos were furious with the nuns at such ‘betrayal’ and formed a vigilante group to save the community from this great ‘plague’ of immigrant settlement . The vigilantes kidnapped the children and nearly killed the nuns and burned the Catholic Church on whose authority the children had been brought to the community . Frustrated by the harsh reception and criticism, the Catholic Church sued to get its ward back and free the children but surprisingly, all the courts including the US Supreme Court, ruled against the Church and in favour of the vigilantes

Towards the end of the book, Gordon asserts her feminist utopianism deductible from her assertion that the tragedy of the orphan affair was a missed opportunity for the women of Clifton-Morenci to show their solidarity for the common child welfare. She says that the common interest by the Anglo and Mexican mothers to care for the city’s orphans should have yielded in a formidable interest for child protection and welfare . In this regard, the only weakness that can be associated with her work is that she erroneously surmises the irrelevance of white and middle class feminism to the experiences of women of colour. Paradoxically, this is the same concept that her laborious work authoritatively disapproves. Despite this apparent setback, the creativity and strength of her work largely overshadows this weakness to the readers’ eye . She has masterly assembled in considerable detail the historical accounts of the story showing acute sensitivity to the intricacies of human relations as dictated by prejudice, bias, power and the passage of