Latinx Urban Condition

The Latinx Urban Condition brings interdisciplinary cultural theory and U.S. Latinx urban literature into conversation, focusing on the realities and urban experiences of Latinx living in major cities in the United States from the 1960’s to the present. As a cultural studies analyst of U.S. Latinx urban literature and culture, the book focuses on analyzing the works of Latinx authors who write about the cities in which they were raised and how growing up in these environments shaped their lives, their communities, and their future. Their fictional work helps us understand how the human and cultural tapestry of the Latinx community is inextricably connected to the spatial transformations taking place in many cities across the country, most notably within the cities in which the narratives take place. The main purpose is to analyze the symbolic realities lived by the characters in order to understand how Latino families and communities are experiencing displacement under instituted neoliberal policies, a process known as development and progress or gentrification. These processes are experienced through aspects of privatization, deregulation, homelessness, residential segregation, inequality, unemployment, and poverty.

In this expansive study of Latinx literature and culture, Crescencio López-González investigates how race and capitalism undergird neoliberal policies that gentrify, uproot, and displace Mexican-American, Puerto Rican, Dominican-American, and Cuban-American communities. Arguing that urbanization shapes the experiences of Latinx writers and cultural producers, López-González’s thorough study deftly and critically examines one of the central concerns of Latinx literature: the desire to create space and ultimately, of finding home. , As they do in many urban neighborhoods, Latinos from multiple backgrounds come together in López-González’s analysis of the birth of a Latinx urban identity through the inner-city experience. The Latinx Urban Condition is a timely and important contribution to the cultural study of Latinos in the cities.

Crescencio López-González is associate professor of Latinx Studies at Utah State University.