Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US City

by Mike Davis, Roman De La Campa (Foreword by)

Overview

The author of "Ecology of Fear" now focuses on the great drama of how Latinosare attempting to translate their urban demographic ascendancy into effectivesocial power. New in paperback.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781804294734
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Series:	Haymarket
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.79(h) x 0.57(d)

About the Author

Mike Davis is the author of several books including Planet of Slums, City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, Late Victorian Holocausts, and Magical Urbanism. He was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. He lives in Papa’aloa, Hawaii.

Michael Sprinker was Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. His Imaginary Relations: Aesthetics and Ideology in the History of Historical Materialism and History and Ideology in Proust are also published by Verso. Together with Mike Davis, he founded Verso’s Haymarket Series and guided it until his death in 1999.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD Latinos and the Crossover Aesthetic by Román de la Campa


1 Spicing the City
2 Buscando América
3 Siamese Twins
4 ¿Cuántos Mas?
5 The Latino Metropolis
6 Tropicalizing Cold Urban Space
7 The Third Border
8 The Devil's Rancho
9 Fabricating the "Brown Peril"
10 Transnational Suburbs
11 Falling Down
12 The Puerto Rican Tragedy
13 Education Ground Zero
14 Disabling Spanish
15 Who Will Feed the Dragon?
16 Broken Rainbows
17 Uprising of the Million


Notes
Index

Editorial Reviews

A truly intelligent, interesting, and timely book. —Bookselling This Week

Angela Garbes

[A]n important book about an ignored topic. —Willamette Week

Helen Silvis

Davis brings his characteristic analytical energy, eye for detail and exhaustive research to bear on an important phenomenon.

In These Times

This well-researched, well-written book is driven by powerful feelings of indignation at the hardships Latinos are suffering.

Washington Post Book World

Workers of the world, eat your carne asada, then smash the state!

Santa Fe New Mexican

[A] lively, trenchant inquiry into a demographic phenomenon of great importance.

Times Literary Supplement

Fans of Mike Davis's slash-and-burn prose and take-no-prisoners credo will not be disappointed by Magical Urbanism. —Bookforum

Andrew Ross

A rare combination of an author, Rachael Carson and Upton Sinclair all in one.

Susan Faludi

Davis, an independent author and social activist, provides an account of the Latinization of the American city. He explores how Latinos are attempting to shape their dramatic demographic growth into effective social power, coordinating worker and student movements that Davis argues are reinventing the American left. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

Another contemporary classic of urban studies from Davis (Ecology of Fear, not reviewed), herald of the good and bad—but mostly bad—times ahead. Davis argues that Latinos are poised to be the largest, most important, and most overlooked minority in US cities. Citing numerous studies, Davis shows that immigrant Latinos and Hispanic-Americans are well on their way to surpassing African-Americans as the largest minority in the US, creating massive, $30-billion regional markets and revitalizing the cities they now call home. In Los Angeles Latinos tend to create parks in their neighborhoods (as opposed to the less centralized strip malls favored by old-guard developers). In New York they settle in the Bronx, following in the footsteps of the Irish and Italian immigrants who came there a century before. Davis is at his best when he describes the overlooked consequences of this migration. He argues that many Latinos experience "syncretic" existences, meaning they live simultaneously in the US and in their homelands. Here we discover a kind of magical urbanism: Indian tribes discussing important village business on conference call—one set of elders in Brooklyn, one in Mexico. But, despite these changes, Davis argues that the future of the Latinos (and therefore of the US) is filled with conflict. Like other minorities, Latinos have suffered as the manufacturing base of large US cities has disappeared overseas. Unlike other minorities, however, Latinos have not regained the ground they lost in the past few decades. In 1959, US-born Mexicans in Southern California earned 19 percent less than non-Hispanic whites; in 1990, that gap had widened to 31 percent.Disinvestmentin big city school systems, and a lack of bilingual education have reduced Latinos' chances at breaking the cycle of dependence. Davis, a good Marxist, ends his apocalyptic message on a hopeful note, however: he points to new, Latino-led union efforts as the best agents for change. A wake-up call for anyone who cares about the future of American cities.

Kirkus Reviews

Fans of Mike Davis’s slash-an-burn prose and take-no-prisoners credo will not be disappointed ... His new book about citified Latinos serves up more helpings of the elegant muckraking that thrilled the readers of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear.”—Andrew Ross, Bookforum

“Ricky Martin, Sammy Sosa, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera—something is happening to American popular culture. Mike Davis pulls together the startling facts, identifies the underlying trends and ... brings his characteristic energy, eye for detail and exhaustive research to bear on an important phenomenon that remains mostly unexplored.”—Jon Wiener, In These Times

“Another contemporary classic of urban studies from Davis. A wake-up call for anyone who cares about the future of American cities.”—Kirkus Reviews

“A non-romantic, optimistic view of the role Latinos will play in revitalizing dead urban areas and a dying American Left.”—San Francisco Bay Guardian

“This well-researched, well-written book is driven by powerful feelings of indignation at the hardships Latinos are suffering in the United States today.”—Washington Post Book World

From the Publisher

A non-romantic, optimistic view of the role Latinos will play in revitalizing dead urban areas and a dying American Left.

San Francisco Bay Guardian

Ricky Martin, Sammy Sosa, Jennifer Lopez, Christina Aguilera—something is happening to American popular culture. Mike Davis pulls together the startling facts, identifies the underlying trends and ... brings his characteristic energy, eye for detail and exhaustive research to bear on an important phenomenon that remains mostly unexplored.

Jon Wiener - In These Times

Fans of Mike Davis's slash-and-burn prose and take-no-prisoners credo will not be disappointed ... His new book about citified Latinos serves up more helpings of the elegant muckraking that thrilled the readers of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear.

Andrew Ross - Bookforum

Fans of Mike Davis's slash-an-burn prose and take-no-prisoners credo will not be disappointed ... His new book about citified Latinos serves up more helpings of the elegant muckraking that thrilled the readers of City of Quartz and Ecology of Fear.

— Andrew Ross

Bookforum