Violence and Hope in a U.S.-Mexico Border Town, by Jody Glittenberg. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press; 2008. 171 pages, paperback, $15.50 plus shipping

Glittenberg's 2008 monograph Violence and Hope in a U.S.-Mexico Border Town is a vivid and balanced report from an ethnographic study. The purpose of the study and the book was to describe how a small Mexican American community, given the name "Esperanza" by the author, lived through poverty and crime. In Esperanza, the residents in this 1-square mile border town were 80% Mexican American and approximately 50% transient.

By using participatory action research, Glittenberg and her co-investigators demonstrated how to make a difference in a community. They used discovering, questioning, listening, and partnering with a community to uncover its strengths and challenges. I recommend this monograph, which provides methodological skills and substantive findings relevant for students, practitioners, and teachers of community health nursing, and transcultural and qualitative research.

The monograph is an excellent example of an effective transdisciplinary research team that consisted of a non-Hispanic White female nurse-anthropologist; a non-Hispanic White male anthropologist; a male Mexican American drug counselor, known in the community as a recovering addict; and a single-mother Mexican American social work student. The Mexican American team members were instrumental for entering, and establishing a partnership with, the Mexican American border community.

This effective team discovered dramatic, serious, and richly described themes-violence, including murder, human trafficking, physical and emotional abuse-and aspects of the cultural traditions, "familism" and "machismo." The team's methods included close partnership with community stakeholders. A reader of this text receives a model by which to approach similar communities.

Throughout the monograph, the author describes the team's skillful and in-depth ethnographic techniques. The report includes researchers' experiences, which realistically demonstrate how methods were honed and perfected. This research resulted in a fuller understanding of culture, poverty, violence, and community processes of recovery and healing. Selected observations by researchers and excerpts from community members add to the richness of the report.

One possible limitation was the brief mention of participants' claims that elders were abused. This issue was not expanded upon in the text. This apparent lack of exploration without further explication is disturbing to a reader familiar with the cultural norm of "familismo," in which the Latino family traditionally takes care of its elders. Another possible limitation was a superficial reference to the cultural norm "machismo." The report defined this term using the new and pejorative meaning of aggressive male dominance, while ignoring earlier writers' traditional characterization of machismo as the noble role a Latino man assumes to protect the family.

The value of Glittenberg's monograph is both methodological and substantive. It demonstrates specific methods for participant observation and ethnographic research. It also models participatory action research and offers insight and understanding into a Mexican American community's preservation of cultural traditions. It also highlights a community's indefatigable resilience in the context of despair, poverty, abuse, and drug trafficking in a southwestern border town.

Janice D. Crist, RN, PhD, FNGNA

Associate Professor, ENCASA, Research Project, College of Nursing, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona