Winner of the 2010 Distinguished Book Award in Latino Studies from the Latin American Studies Association
Follows the Latino public image and its impact on U.S. national identity
Illegal immigrant, tax burden, job stealer. Patriot, family oriented, hard worker, model consumer. Ever since Latinos became the largest minority in the U.S. they have been caught between these wildly contrasting characterizations leaving us to wonder: Are Latinos friend or foe?
Latino Spin cuts through the spin about Latinos' supposed values, political attitudes, and impact on U.S. national identity to ask what these caricatures suggest about Latinos' shifting place in the popular and political imaginary. Noted scholar Arlene Davila illustrates the growing consensus among pundits, advocates, and scholars that Latinos are not a social liability, that they are moving up and contributing, and that, in fact, they are more American than "the Americans." But what is at stake in such a sanitized and marketable representation of Latinidad? Davila follows the spin through the realm of politics, think tanks, Latino museums, and urban planning to uncover whether they effectively challenge the growing fear over Latinos' supposedly dreadful effect on the "integrity" of U.S. national identity. What may be some of the intended or unintended consequences of these more marketable representations in regard to current debates over immigration?
With particular attention to what these representations reveal about the place and role of Latinos in the contemporary politics of race, Latino Spin highlights the realities they skew and the polarization they effect between Latinos and other minorities, and among Latinos themselves along the lines of citizenship and class. Finally, by considering Latinos in all their diversity, including their increasing financial and geographic disparities, Davila can present alternative and more empowering representations of Latinidad to help attain true political equity and intraracial coalitions.
Industry Reviews
"Her invaluable scholarly treatment unearths the competing interests and race-inflected ideological tendencies behind characterizations of Latino political identity in the mainstream media." Publishers Weekly "The finest, fiercest, and most piercing of our public intellectuals ... Davila is a force of nature. In Latino Spin she elegantly unravels the media driven sleight-of-hand that simultaneously celebrates an uber-American (and almost entirely manufactured) Latino middle class while demonizing recent Latino immigrants and the poor folks who resemble them." Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Drown "Davila depicts the frenzied efforts of post-industrial America to corral more than forty million diverse Latinos into a single homogenized market. Whether it's peddling consumer goods, monetizing art and culture, engineering barrio land development, or shaping a new political voting bloc, Latino Spin brilliantly dissects Hispanic-American reality in the twenty-first century." Juan Gonzalez, New York Daily News columnist and author of Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America "A wonderfully written book that cuts through the 'spin' often used to typecast the United States' largest minority group." Mark Sawyer, author of Racial Politics in Post Revolutionary Cuba
