Immigrant communities evince particular and deep relationship to place. Building on this self-evident premise, Walk the Barrio adds the less obvious claim that to write about place you must experience place. Thus, in this book about immigrants, writing, and place, Cristina Rodriguez walks neighborhood streets, talks to immigrants, interviews authors, and puts herself physically in the spaces that she seeks to understand. The word barrio first entered the English lexicon in 1833 and has since become a commonplace not only of American speech but of our literary imagination. Indeed, what draws Rodriguez to the barrios of Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and others is the work of literature that was fueled and inspired by those neighborhoods. Walk the Barrio explores the ways in which authors William Archila, Richard Blanco, Angie Cruz, Junot Díaz, Salvador Plascencia, Héctor Tobar, and Helena María Viramontes use their U.S. hometowns as both setting and stylistic inspiration. Asking how these writers innovate upon or break the rules of genre to render in words an embodied experience of the barrio, Rodriguez considers, for example, how the spatial map of New Brunswick impacts the mobility of Díaz’s female characters, or how graffiti influences the aesthetics of Viramontes’s novels. By mapping each text’s fictional setting upon the actual spaces it references in what she calls "barriographies," Rodriguez reveals connections between place, narrative form, and migrancy. This first-person, interdisciplinary approach presents an innovative model for literary studies as it sheds important light on the ways in which transnationalism transforms the culture of each Latinx barrio, effecting shifts in gender roles, the construction of the family, definitions of social normativity, and racial, ethnic, national, and linguistic identifications.

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class" of young professionals who revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. Award-winning historian A. K. Sandoval-Strausz reveals this history by focusing on two barrios: Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff. These neighborhoods lost residents and jobs for decades before Latin American immigration turned them around beginning in the 1970s. As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.

Welcome to José's neighborhood. In his barrio, people speak an easy mix of Spanish and English and sometimes even Chinese. The masked revelry of Halloween leads into the festive remembrances of the Day of the Dead. And murals on the walls and buildings sing out the stories of the people who live here. As familiar as any neighborhood yet as strange as a foreign country, Jose's barrio isn't in Mexico or Argentina--it's in San Francisco. Award-winning author and photographer George Ancona follows José through a season in the barrio, and in the process gives readers a glimpse of a community as rich and varied as America itself.

This novel is a story of a young girl, Camila, who defied poverty through self-sacrifice, strong determination, and perseverance in order to succeed in life. Camila is a dreamer, but in her journey and quest for work and education in Manila, she met horrendous obstacles that one could never imagine. Camila secluded herself for seven years, but a great awakening in her occurred. It was her turning point in life, so she struggled to rise and shine again no matter what in order to achieve her dream of changing the course of her shattered life and to become an agent of change in the life of others. This is the question: will she succeed, or will she not? Embedded in some chapters is a combination of the Filipino cultural heritage and historical touch that occurred during the 1950s (most especially during the 1970s) up to the modern time.

I was invited by the Bataan Historical Society to be part of a panel asked to present our life experiences during WWII in the Philippines. I came to a realization that I always found it difficult to write about the war. From the time we were liberated in 1945 from the clutches of the Japanese Military, I would jot down notes about incidents I recalled. The thoughts in these notes were usually without beginnings or endings. Then I would get rid of them, not knowing why. They seemed important at the time. When I was teaching Tagalog at Berkeley, I found myself rewriting those "beginnings" in the Tagalog language. I was surprised to find myself producing streams of thoughts that had coherent beginnings and endings. All of them were about the war. I realized that the Filipino side of me was the active speaker. I am half Anglo-American and half Filipina. What did the Filipina side have that made her able to speak? I have decided it is time to write about that of which I had not been aware.

In the tradition of Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate, The House of Impossible Loves is a novel set in twentieth-century Spain and France revolving around a family of cursed women.

A comprehensive travel guide to Spain that provides information on restaurants, hotels, sights, recreational activities, and shopping, and includes an overview of the country's history and culture as well as maps and transportation tips.

Blood into Water weaves the past and the present, from Mayan legends to contemporary stories of corporate greed. Inspired by a true story, and meant for college classrooms, this novel deals with socio-environmental issues, social movement resistance, and personal loss.

Within the Mexican American barrios of Los Angeles, gang activity, including crime and violent acts, has grown and flourished. In the past, community leaders and law enforcement officials have approached the problem, not as something that needs to be understood, but only as something to be gotten rid of. Rejecting that approach, James D. Vigil asserts that only by understanding the complex factors that give birth and persistence to gangs can gang violence be ended. Drawing on many years of experience in the barrios as a youth worker, high school teacher, and researcher, Vigil identifies the elements from which gangs spring: isolation from the dominant culture, poverty, family stress and crowded households, peer pressure, and the adolescent struggle for self-identity. Using interviews with actual gang members, he reveals how the gang often functions as parent, school, and law enforcement in the absence of other role models in the gang members' lives. And he accounts for the longevity of gangs, sometimes over decades, by showing how they offer barrio youth a sense of identity and belonging nowhere else available.