Latinx Heritage Month
Welcome to our digital exhibit celebrating Latinx Heritage Month. This page is a companion to the physical display in the Harvard Kennedy School Library, last available in September 2022. Harvard affiliates can request books via HOLLIS, for pick-up at the library of your choice.
In this book display, you'll find literary nonfiction, novels, memoirs, and poetry about Latinx identities and experiences, as well as books on Latinx politics, activism, and history.
More on Latinx Heritage Month from the HKS Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging:
Latinx Heritage Month, or Hispanic Heritage Month (official government designation) recognizes and honors the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Latin America. It was first observed in 1968 under the Johnson Administration as Hispanic Heritage Week and was later expanded under the Reagan Administration to cover a 30-day period, which we observe from September 15 to October 15. These dates were chosen with consideration to the anniversaries of independence for many Latin American countries including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile. They all fall within September 15 and September 18. Dia de la Raza (Race Day), which is celebrated in Latin America on October 12, also falls within the 30-day period.
Harvard Library Research Guides
Groups & Initiatives around HKS & Harvard
- In Focus: Hispanic Heritage Month and Migration - curated resources from across Harvard including people, scholarship, community resources, institutional history, and more.
- Latin American Politics - HKS course taught by Fernando Limongi that "offers an overview of Latin America's political development and related issues."
- Latin America Policy Journal - former HKS student publication that aimed "to create a strong community of Latin American emerging and consolidated leaders, one in which we can reflect, dialogue, and act in unison to face the most pressing problems of our region. Browse archived issues.
- Journal of Hispanic Policy - former HKS student publication "focused on public policy issues that impact Latinx and Hispanic communities in the United States and Puerto Rico. Browse archived issues.
- Latin American Caucus - HKS student organization that aims to "create a space to discuss issues and carry on initiatives related to Latin America."
- Latin American Policy Association - HKS student organization that aims to "diffuse Latin American policy-relevant knowledge and strengthen the network of people across HKS and Harvard."
- Latinx Caucus - HKS student organization that "seeks to build community between Latinx students across degree programs at Harvard Kennedy School, uplifting their ideas and policy interests to create programming that engages the wider HKS community."
- Harvard GSAS Latinx Student Association - GSAS student organization "committed to building community and providing intellectual support among Latinx-identified graduated students across all Harvard campuses."
- Group for Latin American Musics (GLAM) - GSAS student organization that "promotes the performance of experimental musics from Latin(o) America."
- Latinx Community - curated resources from around Harvard, including community organizations and events, publications, leadership opportunities, arts, and academic/research support. From the Harvard Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging.
Literary Nonfiction, Novels, Memoir & Poetry
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access ebooks (Harvard Key required).
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by
Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common. But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship--the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.
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ISBN: 9781442408920Publication Date: 2012
Bless Me, Ultima by
From "one of the nation's foremost Chicano literary artists" comes a coming-of-age classic and the bestselling Chicano novel of all time that follows a young boy as he questions his faith and beliefs -- now one of PBS's "100 Great American Reads" (Denver Post). Antonio Marez is six years old when Ultima comes to stay with his family in New Mexico. She is a curandera, one who cures with herbs and magic. Under her wise wing, Tony will probe the family ties that bind and rend him, and he will discover himself in the magical secrets of the pagan past--a mythic legacy as palpable as the Catholicism of Latin America. And at each life turn there is Ultima, who delivered Tony into the world... and will nurture the birth of his soul.
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ISBN: 9780446675369Publication Date: 1999
Children of the Land by
This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man's attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. "You were not a ghost even though an entire country was scared of you. No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story." When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary. With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family's encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father's deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother's heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
ISBN: 9780062825599Publication Date: 2020
A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano by
In 1985 an ambitious young Mexican-American from California's rural San Joaquin Valley became one of the few Latinos to enter America's most prestigious university. The lessons Ruben Navarette, Jr., learned as he journeyed from his middle-class surroundings to an exclusive 350-year-old world of privilege would forever alter his life. With intelligence and grace, Navarrette chronicles his experiences at Harvard, where he confronted questions of identity and ethnicity, and wrestled with the need to reconcile his values and opinions with the expectations of his family, his race, and society at large. More than a deeply personal memoir, A Darker Shade of Crimson also dares to pursue the complex questions of what needs to be done to provide a quality education for Latinos and other minorities in America. Whatever one's views on affirmative action, racism, and liberal education in this country today, his provocative story will offer a new perspective on these issues and a message of hope for tomorrow's generation.
ISBN: 9780553374278Publication Date: 1994Emplumada by Emplumada is Lorna Dee Cervantes's first book, a collection of poems remarkable for their surface clarity, precision of image, and emotional urgency. Rooted in her Chicana heritage, these poems illuminate the American experience of the last quarter century and, at a time when much of what is merely fashionable in American poetry is recondite and exclusive, Cervantes has the ability to speak to and for a large audience.
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ISBN: 0822934361Publication Date: 1981
The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life by
Growing up in rural El Salvador in the wake of the civil war, the United States was a distant fantasy to identical twins Ernesto and Raul Flores--until, at age seventeen, a deadly threat from the region's brutal gangs forces them to flee the only home they've ever known. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the Flores twins as they make their way across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of teenage life with only each other for support. With intimate access and breathtaking range, Markham offers an unforgettable testament to the migrant experience.
ISBN: 9781101906200Publication Date: 2018-05-22
The House on Mango Street by
The House on Mango Street is the remarkable story of Esperanza Cordero, a young Latina girl growing up in Chicago, inventing for herself who and what she will become. Told in a series of vignettes-sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous-Sandra Cisneros' masterpiece is a classic story of childhood and self-discovery. Few other books in our time have touched so many readers.
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ISBN: 0679734775Publication Date: 1991
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter by
Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed. But it's not long before Julia discovers that Olga might not have been as perfect as everyone thought. With the help of her best friend Lorena, and her first love, first everything boyfriend Connor, Julia is determined to find out. Was Olga really what she seemed? Or was there more to her sister's story? And either way, how can Julia even attempt to live up to a seemingly impossible ideal?
ISBN: 9781524700485Publication Date: 2017
The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez by
On a hot, still day in May, Amalia Gómez sees--or thinks she sees--a large silver cross in the sky. Does this vision foretell a miracle? The pragmatic, twice-divorced Amalia is doubtful. Amalia's neighborhood--a decaying area near a shabby part of Hollywood Boulevard--is under attack from gang wars and the police. Her live-in boyfriend is behaving suspiciously, her "fast" teenage daughter Gloria has become too much to handle, and her teenage son is hinting he's in serious trouble. Most of all, Amalia is haunted by thoughts of her past and her first-born, dead in jail under mysterious circumstances. As the epiphanies and small omens of Amalia's day build to a climax as wondrous as it is shattering, PEN Center USA's Lifetime Achievement Award-winning author John Rechy takes us into the complicated life of a Chicano family living in Los Angeles--in all its spirited, gritty reality, giving us "a novel with more truth in it than a carload of best-sellers" (The Washington Post).
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ISBN: 9781555847296Publication Date: 2007
My Broken Language: A Memoir by
Quiara Alegría Hudes was the sharp-eyed girl on the stairs while her family danced their defiance in a tight North Philly kitchen. She was awed by her mother and aunts and cousins, but haunted by the unspoken, untold stories of the barrio--even as she tried to find her own voice in the sea of language around her, written and spoken, English and Spanish, bodies and books, Western art and sacred altars. Her family became her private pantheon, a gathering circle of powerful orisha-like women with tragic real-world wounds, and she vowed to tell their stories--but first she'd have to get off the stairs and join the dance. She'd have to find her language. Weaving together Hudes's love of music with the songs of her family, the lessons of North Philly with those of Yale, this is a multimythic dive into home, memory, and belonging--narrated by an obsessed girl who fought to become an artist so she could capture the world she loved in all its wild and delicate beauty.
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ISBN: 9780399590047Publication Date: 2021
Sabrina and Corina: Stories by
Kali Fajardo-Anstine's magnetic story collection breathes life into her Indigenous Latina characters and the land they inhabit. Set against the remarkable backdrop of Denver, Colorado-a place that is as fierce as it is exquisite-these women navigate the land the way they navigate their lives- with caution, grace, and quiet force. In "Sugar Babies," ancestry and heritage are hidden inside the earth, but have the tendency to ascend during land disputes. "Any Further West" follows a sex worker and her daughter as they leave their ancestral home in southern Colorado only to find a foreign and hostile land in California. In "Tomi," a woman returns home from prison, finding herself in a gentrified city that is a shadow of the one she remembers from her childhood. And in the title story, "Sabrina & Corina," a Denver family falls into a cycle of violence against women, coming together only through ritual. Sabrina & Corina is a moving narrative of unrelenting feminine power and an exploration of the universal experiences of abandonment, heritage, and an eternal sense of home.
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ISBN: 9780525511298Publication Date: 2019
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by
This groundbreaking collection reflects an uncompromised definition of feminism by women of color. Through personal essays, criticism, interviews, testimonials, poetry, and visual art, this collection explores, as coeditor Cherrie Moraga writes, "the complex confluence of identities - race, class, gender, sexuality - systemic to women of color oppression and liberation."
ISBN: 9780913175033Publication Date: 1983
When I Was Puerto Rican: A Memoir by
A young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.
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ISBN: 0306814528Publication Date: 2006
Politics, Activism & History
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access ebooks (Harvard Key required).
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by
Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, as exalted by widely taught formulations such as "manifest destiny" and "Jacksonian democracy," and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism. In precise detail, Ortiz traces this untold history from the Jim Crow-esque racial segregation of the Southwest, the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, International Workers' Day, when migrant laborers-Chicana/os, Afro-Cubanos, and immigrants from nearly every continent on earth-united in resistance on the first "Day Without Immigrants." Incisive and timely, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a bottom-up history told from the viewpoint of African American and Latinx activists and revealing the radically different ways people of the diaspora addressed issues still plaguing the United States today.
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ISBN: 9780807013106Publication Date: 2018
Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza by
Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. Borderlands / La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us.
ISBN: 9781879960855Publication Date: 2012
Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads: Social, Economic, and Political Change by
Dubbed the "decade of the Hispanic," the 1980s was instead a period of retrenchment for Chicanas/os as they continued to confront many of the problems and issues of earlier years in the face of a more conservative political environment. Following a substantial increase in activism in the early 1990s, Chicana/o scholars are now prepared to take stock of the Chicano Movement's accomplishments and shortcomings--and the challenges it yet faces--on the eve of a new millennium. Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is a state-of-the-art assessment of the most significant developments in the conditions, fortunes, and experiences of Chicanas/os since the late seventies, with an emphasis on the years after 1980, which have thus far received little scholarly attention. Ten essays by leading Chicana and Chicano scholars on economic, social, educational, and political trends in Chicana/o life examine such issues as the rapid population growth of Chicanas/os and other Latinos; the ascendancy of Reaganomics and the turn to the right of American politics; the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment; the launching of new initiatives by the Mexican government toward the Chicano community; and the emergence of a new generation of political activists. The authors have been drawn from a broad array of disciplines, ranging from economics to women's studies, in order to offer a multidisciplinary perspective on Chicana/o developments in the contemporary era. The inclusion of authors from different regions of the United States and from divergent backgrounds enhances the broad perspective of the volume. The editors offer this anthology with the intent of providing timely and useful insights and stimulating reflection and scholarship on a diverse and complex population. A testament to three decades of intense social struggle, Chicanas/Chicanos at the Crossroads is ample evidence that the legacy of the Movimiento is alive and well.
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ISBN: 0816516340Publication Date: 1996
Civic Engagement in Diverse Latinx Communities: Learning from Social Justice Partnerships in Action by
Students, faculty, and community partners alike will find Civic Engagement in Diverse Latinx Communities: Learning From Social Justice Partnerships in Action accessible not only because it includes an array of examples regarding Latinx civic engagement, but it also demonstrates that personal experiences are powerful tools for the production of new knowledge. This book reveals an epistemology of social justice that aims to investigate and develop a new Latinx community-university praxis for how to engage with diverse communities in the twenty-first century.
ISBN: 9781433147265Publication Date: 2018
Civil Rights and Beyond: African American and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-Century United States by
Civil Rights and Beyond examines the dynamic relationships between African American and Latino/a activists in the United States from the 1930s to the present day. Building on recent scholarship that explores black-Latino/a relations in the United States, this book pushes the timeframe for the study of interactions between blacks and a variety of Latino/a groups beyond the standard chronology of the civil rights era. As such, the book merges a host of community histories-each with their own distinct historical experiences and activisms-to explore group dynamics, differing strategies and activist moments, and the broader quests of these communities for rights and social justice. This book is framed around the concept of "activism," which most fully encompasses the relationships that blacks and Latinos have enjoyed throughout the twentieth century. Wide ranging and pioneering, Civil Rights and Beyond explores black and Latino/a activism from California to Florida, Chicago to Bakersfield-and a host of other communities and cities-to demonstrate the complicated nature of African American-Latino/a activism in the twentieth-century United States.
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ISBN: 9780820349169Publication Date: 2016
De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views for a Multi-Colored Century by
The unique Chicana voice of Elizabeth Martinez arises from more than thirty years of experience in the movements for civil rights, women's liberation, and Latina/o empowerment. With sections on women's organizing, struggles for economic justice, and the Latina/o youth movement, De Colores Means All of Us will appeal to readers and activists seeking to organize for the future and build new movements for liberation.
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ISBN: 9780896085831Publication Date: 1999
Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History by
From the Alianza Hispano-Americana, a mutual aid society founded in Tucson, Arizona in 1894, to the Zoot Suit Riots in Los Angeles in 1943, this first-ever dictionary of important issues in the U.S. Latino struggle for civil rights defines a wide-ranging list of key terms. With over 922 entries on significant events, figures, laws, and other historical items, this ground-breaking reference work covers the fight for equality from the mid-nineteenth century to the present by the various Hispanic groups in the United States.
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ISBN: 9781558853478Publication Date: 2006-12-01
Homelands: Four Friends, Two Countries, and the Fate of the Great Mexican-American Migration by
From prizewinning journalist and immigration expert Alfredo Corchado comes the sweeping story of the great Mexican migration from the late 1980s to today. When Alfredo Corchado moved to Philadelphia in 1987, he felt as if he was the only Mexican in the city. But in a restaurant called Tequilas, he connected with two other Mexican men and one Mexican American, all feeling similarly isolated. Over the next three decades, the four friends continued to meet, coming together over their shared Mexican roots and their love of tequila. One was a radical activist, another a restaurant/tequila entrepreneur, the third a lawyer/politician. Alfredo himselfwas a young reporter for theWall Street Journal. Homelandsmerges the political and the personal, telling the story of the last great Mexican migration through the eyes of four friends at a time when the Mexican population in the United States swelled from 700,000 people during the 1970s to more than 35 million people today. It is the narrative of the United States in a painful economic and political transition. As we move into a divisive, nativist new era of immigration politics,Homelands is a must-read to understand the past and future of the immigrant story in the United States, and the role of Mexicans in shaping America's history. A deeply moving book full of colorful characters searching for home, it is essential reading.
ISBN: 9781632865540Publication Date: 2018
Latino Urbanism: The Politics of Planning, Policy, and Redevelopment by
The nation's Latina/o population has now reached over 50 million, or 15% of the estimated total U.S. population of 300 million, and a growing portion of the world's population now lives and works in cities that are increasingly diverse. Latino Urbanism provides the first national perspective on Latina/o urban policy, addressing a wide range of planning policy issues that impact both Latinas/os in the US, as well as the nation as a whole, tracing how cities develop, function, and are affected by socio-economic change. The contributors are a diverse group of Latina/o scholars attempting to link their own unique theoretical interpretations and approaches to political and policy interventions in the spaces and cultures of everyday life. The three sections of the book address the politics of planning and its historic relationship with Latinas/os, the relationship between the Latina/o community and conventional urban planning issue sand challenges, and the future of urban policy and Latina/o barrios. Moving beyond a traditional analysis of Latinas/os in the Southwest, the volume expands the understanding of the important relationships between urbanization and Latinas/os including Mexican Americans of several generations within the context of the restructuring of cities, in view of the cultural and political transformation currently encompassing the nation.
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ISBN: 9780814784044Publication Date: 2012
Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture by
The Latinx revolution in US culture, society, and politics "Latinx" (pronounced "La-teen-ex") is the gender-neutral term that covers one of the largest and fastest growing minorities in the United States, accounting for 17 percent of the country. Over 58 million Americans belong to the category, including a sizable part of the country's working class, both foreign and native-born. Their political empowerment is altering the balance of forces in a growing number of states. And yet Latinx barely figure in America's ongoing conversation about race and ethnicity. Remarkably, the US census does not even have a racial category for "Latino." In this groundbreaking discussion, Ed Morales explains how Latinx political identities are tied to a long Latin American history of mestizaje--"mixedness" or "hybridity"--and that this border thinking is both a key to understanding bilingual, bicultural Latin cultures and politics and a challenge to America's infamously black-white racial regime. This searching and long-overdue exploration of the meaning of race in American life reimagines Cornel West's bestselling Race Matters with a unique Latinx inflection.
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ISBN: 9781784783198Publication Date: 2018
Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans by
The history of Mexican Americans is a history of the intermingling of races--Indian, White, and Black. This racial history underlies a legacy of racial discrimination against Mexican Americans and their Mexican ancestors that stretches from the Spanish conquest to current battles over ending affirmative action and other assistance programs for ethnic minorities. Asserting the centrality of race in Mexican American history, Martha Menchaca here offers the first interpretive racial history of Mexican Americans, focusing on racial foundations and race relations from prehispanic times to the present. Menchaca uses the concept of racialization to describe the process through which Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. authorities constructed racial status hierarchies that marginalized Mexicans of color and restricted their rights of land ownership. She traces this process from the Spanish colonial period and the introduction of slavery through racial laws affecting Mexican Americans into the late twentieth-century. This re-viewing of familiar history through the lens of race recovers Blacks as important historical actors, links Indians and the mission system in the Southwest to the Mexican American present, and reveals the legal and illegal means by which Mexican Americans lost their land grants.
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ISBN: 0292752547Publication Date: 2002
The Undocumented Americans by
Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she'd tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer's phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants--and to find the hidden key to her own. Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented--and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.
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ISBN: 9780399592683Publication Date: 2020Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio by For decades now, scholars and politicians alike have argued that the concentration of poverty in city housing projects would produce distrust, alienation, apathy, and social isolation--the disappearance of what sociologists call social capital. But relatively few have examined precisely how such poverty affects social capital or have considered for what reasons living in a poor neighborhood results in such undesirable effects. This book examines a neglected Puerto Rican enclave in Boston to consider the pros and cons of social scientific thinking about the true nature of ghettos in America. Mario Luis Small dismantles the theory that poor urban neighborhoods are inevitably deprived of social capital. He shows that the conditions specified in this theory are vaguely defined and variable among poor communities. According to Small, structural conditions such as unemployment or a failed system of familial relations must be acknowledged as affecting the urban poor, but individual motivations and the importance of timing must be considered as well. Brimming with fresh theoretical insights, Villa Victoria is an elegant work of sociology that will be essential to students of urban poverty.
ISBN: 0226762912Publication Date: 2004
