Sunshine and Smoke: The Environmental History of Los Angeles

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-475
Author(s):  
Robert. Phelps
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Review: Urban Latino Cultures: La Vida Latina en LA by Gustavo Leclerc, Raúl Villa, and Michael J. Dear (eds.)

1999 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 126-128
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Ramirez
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crime Wave ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
The City ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Throughout the twentieth century (and now the twenty-first), the specter of a Latina/o past, present, and future has haunted the myth of Los Angeles as a sunny, bucolic paradise. At the same time it has loomed behind narratives of the city as a dystopic, urban nightmare. In the 1940s Carey McWilliams pointed to the fabrication of a “Spanish fantasy heritage” that made Los Angeles the bygone home of fair señoritas, genteel caballeros and benevolent mission padres. Meanwhile, the dominant Angeleno press invented a “zoot” (read Mexican-American) crime wave. Unlike the aristocratic, European Californias/os of lore, the Mexican/American “gangsters” of the 1940s were described as racial mongrels. What's more, the newspapers explicitly identified them as the sons and daughters of immigrants-thus eliding any link they may have had to the Californias/os of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or to the history of Los Angeles in general.

scholarly journals Razabilly Boogie

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 91-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas F. Centino
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Primary Producers ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Los Angeles is the home to one of the largest and most vibrant scenes for rockabilly enthusiasts in the world. Since the turn of this century, the Los Angeles rockabilly scene has transformed to meet the desires of the Chicana/os and Latina/os who now make up the scene’s primary producers and consumers. Drawing on their own cultural genealogies, Los Angeles Chicana/os and Latina/os have not only claimed the scene for themselves, but have also rewrote themselves into the history of Los Angeles, and rewrote Los Angeles into the history of rock & roll.

Learning from Los Angeles

Urban History ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 428-434
Author(s):  
Peter J. Larkham
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
American City ◽  
Entertainment Media ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
Extended Review ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

Several recent books provide reason for an extended review of aspects of the development and history of Los Angeles. This city is so prominent particularly in the entertainment media that it is often seen (from outside the USA at least) as the archetypal American city, which gives rise to many misconceptions. There is a great deal still to learn from Los Angeles.

What’s Good for Boyle Heights Has Been Good at the Los Angeles Coliseum

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Andre Guridy
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
City Council ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Boyle Heights ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good For ◽  
Political Dimensions ◽  
Urban Institution ◽  
History Of Los Angeles

George Sánchez’s 2004 article “What’s Good for Boyle Heights Is Good for the Jews” brings to light the fascinating history of the cultural and political dimensions of what he calls “radical interracialism” in the mid-twentieth century. As I delve more deeply into the racial, ethnic, and recreational history of Los Angeles, I find myself strongly indebted to the work of Sánchez and his cohorts of ethnic studies scholars working on Los Angeles. Sánchez’s research on the East Los Angeles neighborhood of Boyle Heights during the 1940s and ’50s has uncovered what Luis Alvarez calls a “counter-history of Los Angeles”: a narrative of the city’s and county’s history that disrupts the dominant understandings of decentralization, privatization, and apartheid-like segregation. To Sánchez, Boyle Heights was a “particular site of ethnic cooperation in the midst of racial segregation and political conservatism.” Recalling the neighborhood’s history during this period, he writes, “better situates our own search for neighborhoods of diversity that truly worked together in the past and our hope of a multiracial Los Angeles that can work together in the future.” Following his lead, I examine Sánchez’s formulation of “radical interracialism,” as articulated in his essays on Jewish cross-racial interaction in Boyle Heights and its political manifestation in the ascendance of Edward Roybal, the first Mexican American to serve in the Los Angeles City Council since the late nineteenth century. In these essays, Sánchez historicizes the making of cross-racial linkages on both cultural and political levels. Inspired by his research, I take up his challenge by embarking on my own search for radical interracialism in an unlikely yet ubiquitous urban institution—a sports stadium, whose hidden history of racial integration and public culture counters the social hierarchies inscribed in the neoliberal ballpark of the urban gentrifying present.

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