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Title: Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the US Big City by Mike Davis, Roman de la Campa ISBN: 1-85984-328-X Publisher: Verso Books Pub. Date: July, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.25 (4 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: ....and mystical gang bangers rejuvenate small town USA
Comment: Davis is sympathetic, but like a typical lefty, places his faith in the labor movement to unite the diverse groups of latinos migrating to US cities. Yeah right. Another pipe-dream that the left can smoke. Hey Mike, how do like Hawaii? Come check out the ****holes like Modesto, Fresno, Salinas and other enclaves in CA that Mexicans are 'reinventing' and then blow back to the islands for your next book on how racist whites are for failing to accept this ridiculous fate for their home states and regions. The heck with the racist angle, how about the population question. How wonderful the world will be when CA has 60 million people, many of them poor, plenty in gangs, and ignorant. Or is that world already here? Aloha.
I gave this book 4 stars because the author's views are old school commie, a rare perspective to maintain as the world fails apart from both capitalist and communist excess.
Rating: 5
Summary: Searing prose & difficult truths
Comment: Although each chapter takes on a different topic--bilingual education, anti-Latino violence, the politics of school funding and the staggeringly high Latino drop-out rate, and labor divisions and income discrepancies, to name a few--a unifying theme is present throughout. Essentially, the book describes the Latino influx, particularly that of the past ten or so years, the effects it has had on U.S. cities, and the Anglo backlash to this "Latinization." Obnoxious back-cover review excerpts not withstanding, the "Magical Urbanism" is not about Jennifer Lopez and the new Anglatin popular culture; it addresses more substantial issues than such reviews give it credit for. The numbers Davis presents are disturbing, but the reasons for finding them so will depend on your perspective: For those who seek to preserve the current Anglo power stucture, the degree of Latinization that the country is undergoing (or simply the sheer number of Hispanics it is absorbing) will be terrifying. To those more sympathetic to the plight of people of color seeking to gain a foothold in this country, the details about the poor living conditions and antipathy toward Latinos will be equally disturbing. The book focuses primarily on New York, Miami, Chicago, and especially southern California, but it provides a good overview of the Latino Condition--though it is worth noting that Davis never loses sight of the heterogeniety of the various peoples encompassed by the term "Latino"--nationwide. Don't let the gravity of the subject matter throw you, though, if you're simply looking for a compelling read; Davis is a master of his art, and "Magical Urbanism" is as hard to put down as a good novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: Hypothetical, Not Inevitable
Comment: Mike Davis is our premier bare-knuckled Marxist-savant polemicist, doing prodigious amounts of research on important topics and writing in a molten style that literally pulls your eyes down the page. For these reasons alone, attention must be paid. (This is difficult advice to a nation of "comfort readers," who--far from being provoked by their nighttime reading--love to curl up with a good Danielle Steele until the Sandman comes.) Whatever other functions a Davis book serves, it's an in-your-face test of the reader's mettle. ...
Davis paints what seems to me a more than plausible vision of a Hispanic/Latino future that I'll bet you haven't given much thought to (unless you live in SoCal or along the southern border). One useful thing about demography is that a simple extrapolation will get the analyst to several plausible hypotheses about things to come. This is one service Davis has performed. One of the useful mental exercises Davis sends you off on once he makes his preliminary case (of a Latino/Hispanic plurality by 2050) prompts you to comtemplate the coming contours of national level politics, immigration policy, relations with Central and Latin America--in other words, this book can rattle your mental universe. And his chapter on "transnational suburbs"--in which he analyzes bilocated Latino communities that, in our internet and cheap-transportation age, retain a deep involvement in both their native and immigrant communities--is, for me, worth the price of the book.
This is a useful tutorial about the drift of our demographic destiny in a "globalized" world, but the picture Davis paints is by no means inevitable. Second and third generation immigrant communities tend to assimilate to the dominant culture through a variety of means (although Davis tends to argue that contemporary immigrant communities are driven by walls of discrimination back upon themselves in ways earlier immigrants in the second and third generations were not). The future is seldom, in any significant respect, a straight-line extrapolation of any trend. And Davis's great hope for the mobilization of the heretofore inchoate political might of the new immigrant communities--a revivified labor movement--seems, at best, a pipe dream, but one that more than a few commentators see well within the realm of possibility, as income differentials widen and a pronounced underclass sentiment proliferates among the have-nots.
In all, a quick, stimulating, worthy read. And for those parents who wonder which language little Johnny should study in high school, or in his language immersion pre-school, David would probably say--and I'd have to agree--Spanish is a good choice. Venceremos!
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Title: Global Uprising : Confronting the Tyrannies of the 21st Century : Stories from a New Generation of Activists by Neva Welton, Linda Wolf ISBN: 0865714460 Publisher: New Society Pub Pub. Date: November, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Dead Cities: And Other Tales by Mike Davis ISBN: 1565848446 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Ecology of Fear : Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster by Mike Davis ISBN: 0375706070 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 September, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Origins of the Urban Crisis by Thomas J. Sugrue ISBN: 0691058881 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 13 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $20.95 |
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Title: City of Quartz : Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis ISBN: 0679738061 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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