"A remarkable work, theorizing patriarchy as ever-changing rather than static. It stands as a social history which couples conceptual power with quantitative data, qualitative assertions and glimpses into the everyday world of colonial Mexico.” — Canadians Journal of Latin American/Caribbean Studies
“Theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich. . . . Stern’s study illuminates the complex relationship between colonialism and patriarchalism.” — Latin American Research Review
“One of the most significant contributions to Latin American and women’s history published in the past two decades.” — Western Historical Quarterly
“This is a complex book well worth reading, and Stern provides important insights that scholars may debate for some time in the future.” — Journal of Social History
“An elegant and convincing analysis of gender relations.” — Colonial Latin American Historical Review
“This is a theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich study of gender and popular political culture in colonial Mexico. . . . It illuminates in a variety of ways the complex relationship between colonialism and patriarchalism.” — American Historical Review
“The Secret History of Gender is notable for the density and insight of its argument, its enormously broad theoretical reach, its thoughtfulness, its empathic quality, and the consummate skill with which Stern sets forth his highly ethnographic, detailed empirical material. This is a truly pathbreaking book.” — Eric Van Young, University of California, San Diego
“Prodigiously researched, engagingly written, and empowering in its analysis, Stern’s book will reshape the way that Latin Americanists and others conceptualize the history of peasant and plebeian politics, community, the family, and gender struggle. I know of no other colleague who is at once so theoretically broad, yet has such an eye for illustrating his synoptic vision with evocative and poignant human episodes.” — Gilbert M. Joseph, Yale University
“This study of gender and family relations — and, not incidentally, of domestic violence — uses the most sophisticated conceptions of gender available to historians, applying a dynamic and interactive rather than a static model of patriarchy. It constantly directs the reader to questions of power and should be influential on scholarship about all parts of the world, not just Latin America.” — Linda Gordon, author of Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence
“It would be a pity if The Secret History of Gender, a state-of-the-art social history of late colonial Mexican patriarchy, were to become the secret treasure of Latin American scholars. Inverting the metropolitan gaze, Steve Stern plumbs Mexican archival sources to derive a conceptual apparatus for understanding the everyday workings of patriarchal politics under prefeminist and nonfeminist historical settings in the West. The result is a brilliant contribution to the comparative study of gender, power, and popular culture everywhere. Share the secret!” — Judith Stacey, University of California, Davis
