Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2020 -

As agents of the law, perhaps no other institutions have been more impactful and detrimental in everyday life than American police forces. Many aspects of law enforcement's functions to manage, control, marginalize, and silence have been well documented, but the historical mechanisms, beliefs, and ideologies that shape and re-shape American law, policing, and discourse receive much less analysis. By extension, the Latino experience has been left out as well. Prompting engagement, reform, accountability, and justice, Mirande (Univ. of California, Riverside) compiled this masterful collection on anti-Latino violence in the US vis-a-vis police and the law. Contributing authors delineate the historical, social, legal, and ideological forces governing the Latino experience with police, the law, and the mainstream US. In the present highly charged political milieu, this book offers timely insights into policing, law and society, race/ethnic relations, and social and legal reform. Gringo Injustice is a must read for anyone interested in better understanding the Latino experience with police and the law and those vested in positive transformation. It is especially vital for students of sociology, history, ethnic/minority studies, legal studies, and criminal justice.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readership levels.

Kids at Work makes a timely contribution to the study of immigrant labor, children, and family. Drawing from 66 interviews with street-vending youth and their families in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Estrada (Arizona State Univ.) examines the sociopolitical structures that force these families to street vend. The poignant testimonies of young Latinx street vendors and their families provide vivid depictions of their daily struggles in the city. At the same time, the author highlights these young peoples' agency as well as the central role they play in their families' survival. The first two chapters frame Latinx street vending in Los Angeles; chapters 3 and 4 focus on how the young vendors' economic contributions shape family dynamics. The transformation of family relations is expanded in chapters 5 and 6 through an analysis of gender roles, and the last chapter emphasizes the central role education plays for the young people and their parents. Written clearly and accessibly, this book offers an essential framework from which to critically examine Latinx childhood, family, labor, immigration, and community.Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels.

In Stagnant Dreamers, Rendon (Univ. of California, Irvine) follows the lives of 42 second-generation Latino males who matured into adulthood while living in two high-poverty neighborhoods in LA, and were often labeled "at-risk" due to their race, ethnicity, gender, or zip code. This ethnographic study focuses on the relationship between their immigrant parents, the American Dream, and upward mobility. Immersing herself in these neighborhoods, Rendon conducted in-depth interviews to capture these young men's stories and understand the impact of the urban context on their integration process. Interviews highlight participants' understanding of neighborhood politics and how they navigate decisions influenced by their daily lives, social mobility, and life prospects. Guided by their immigrant parents' optimism, these young men embraced the notion of hard work and sacrifice as a means to succeed. Consequently, the study's findings illustrate how structures of inequality impacted urban violence and social isolation and shaped these young men's upward mobility outcomes. Stagnant Dreamers is a vital addition to the research on the experiences of second-generation Latinos raised in urban environments by immigrant parents.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty.