Latinx Belonging: Community Building and Resilience in the United States - Paperback

by Natalia Deeb-Sossa (Editor), Jennifer Bickham Mendez (Editor)

What does it mean to be Latinx? This pressing question forms the core of Latinx Belonging, which brings together cutting-edge research to discuss the multilayered ways this might be answered.

Latinx Belonging is anchored in the claim that Latinx people are not defined by their marginalization but should instead be understood as active participants in their communities and contributors to U.S. society. The volume's overarching analytical approach recognizes the differences, identities, and divisions among people of Latin American origin in the United States, while also attending to the power of mainstream institutions to shape their lives and identities. Contributors to this volume view "belonging" as actively produced through struggle, survival, agency, resilience, and engagement.

This work positions Latinxs' struggles for recognition and inclusion as squarely located within intersecting power structures of gender, race, sexuality, and class and as shaped by state-level and transnational forces such as U.S. immigration policies and histories of colonialism. From the case of Latinxs' struggles for recognition in the arts, to queer Latinx community resilience during COVID-19 and in the wake of mass shootings, to Indigenous youth's endurance and survival as unaccompanied minors in Los Angeles, the case studies featured in this collection present a rich and textured picture of the diversity of the U.S. Latinx experience in the twenty-first century.

Contributors
Andrés Acosta
Jack "Trey" Allen
Jennifer Bickham Mendez
Stephanie L. Canizales
Christopher Cuevas
Natalia Deeb-Sossa
Yvette G. Flores
Melanie Jones Gast
Monika Gosin
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo
Nolan Kline
Verónica Montes
Yvonne Montoya
Michael De Anda Muñiz
Suzanne Oboler
Gilda L. Ochoa
Dina G. Okamoto
Marco Antonio Quiroga
Michelle Téllez

Author Biography

Natalia Deeb-Sossa is professor of Chicano/o studies at the University California, Davis. Her research focuses on Mexican immigrant farmworker families in California. She is author of Doing Good: Racial Tensions and Workplace Inequalities at a Community Clinic in El Nuevo South.

Jennifer Bickham Mendez is professor of sociology at William & Mary. She is the author of From the Revolution to the Maquiladoras: Gender, Labor, and Globalization in Nicaragua.