Latino City

“Passionately examines the painful transformation of Lawrence, Massachusetts, from a declining post-WW II industrial city into a majority Latino city with its own distinctive identity and challenges in the 21st century. Recommended.”—CHOICE

“Sociologists and historians will find that Barber’s complex approach opens new discussions on “imperial migrants” and “urban crisis” as it relates to US imperialism and racial tensions. By bringing the reader into the center of urban politics in the twentieth and twenty-first century, Barber carves out a space for these important debates.”—The Sixties

“An excellent, engagingly written book that is a must-read for anyone interested in Latino, urban/metropolitan, immigration, and political history.”—American Historical Review

“An exceptional book that makes a substantial contribution to the fields of urban, immigration, and Latino studies.”—Labor: Studies in Working-Class History

“Barber’s account is a worthwhile and significant step towards correcting the relative absence of Latinos in the historiography of urban uprisings and is extremely relevant to an understanding race relations and urban underdevelopment in New England.”—Historical Journal of Massachusetts

“Barber skillfully balances an analysis of the structural factors with the personal experiences of those involved in the events of 1984.”—Historical Journal of Massachusetts

“She very clearly shows us how, in this particular case, deliberate policies and laws bolstered suburbanization in the expense of Latinos.”—Journal of American Ethnic History

“Beautifully written and brimming with insights, Latino City captures the remarkable story of New England’s ‘Latinization’ in the late twentieth century. Chronicling how Dominicans and Puerto Ricans reanimated Lawrence, Massachusetts, after World War II, Barber foregrounds the ways in which U.S. imperialism in the Caribbean drove new demographic changes in that city and elsewhere. A terrific exploration of Latino struggles against deindustrialization, racial violence, and welfare reform as well as the creative ways in which residents of Lawrence remade urban spaces and fashioned new local and transnational politics, Latino City deserves wide attention by scholars and the general public." —Stephen Pitti, Yale University

“Llana Barber offers a welcome addition to the growing literature on Latinos/as in the urban North. Drawing on vivid oral history interviews and rich data, she gives readers an intimate view of how Latinos/as in Lawrence encountered the urban crisis, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Barber presents an ideal model for interethnic Latino/a urban history, one that reminds us that Latinos/as have lived among one another in ethnically diverse communities and that they migrated to smaller cities beyond New York, Chicago, and Miami in the postwar years.” — Lilia Fernandez, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago

“Latino City offers an essential lens for understanding the national and global histories of immigration and of U.S. cities in the second half of the twentieth century. In recounting the history of Lawrence, and the stories of the Dominican, Puerto Rican, and other Latino migrants who saved it from abandonment and decay, Barber emphasizes the disjuncture between the revitalization that these Latinos brought to the city and the appalling racism, abuse, exclusion, and brutality that they faced in everyday life." —A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, University of New Mexico