"A young Mexican-American boxer dreams of fighting his way out of his family's economic plight in his barrio neighborhood. His sister, a passionate ballet folklorico dancer and dedicated cultural artist, dreams of owning her own dance studio to pass her Mexican traditions on to another generation. Their flamboyant mother dreams of taking her poker winnings and going on an extended vacation to the Canary Islands. The family's dreams are deferred when the young boxer sustains a brutal head injury in the boxing ring. As her brother's condition worsens, and as she falls unexpectedly in love with a white doctor from out-of-state, the dancer and her family learn how far they are willing to go in the name of love."--Amazon.com.

En Barrio Hollywood, un tenso drama familiar, un joven boxeador México-americano sueña con pelear para encontrar una salida a la difícil situación económica de su familia en el barrio. Su hermana, una apasionada bailarina de ballet folklórico y dedicada artista cultural, sueña con ser dueña de su propio estudio de baile para pasar sus tradiciones mexicanas a las próximas generaciones. Su excéntrica madre sueña con tomar sus ganancias del póker y tomar unas largas vacaciones en las Islas Canarias. Los sueños familiares se detienen cuando el joven boxeador sufre una lesión brutal en la cabeza en el ring de boxeo. Mientras la condición de su hermano empeora y su amor por el doctor americano crece inesperadamente, la bailarina y su familia aprenden que tan lejos pueden ir en el nombre del amor. In Barrio Hollywood, a tense family drama, a young Mexican-American boxer dreams of fighting his way out of his family¿s economic plight in his barrio neighborhood. His sister, a passionate ballet folklórico dancer and dedicated cultural artist, dreams of owning her own dance studio to pass her Mexican traditions on to another generation. Their flamboyant mother dreams of taking her poker winnings and going on an extended vacation to the Canary Islands. The family¿s dreams are deferred when the young boxer sustains a brutal head injury in the boxing ring. As her brother¿s condition worsens, and as she falls unexpectedly in love with a white doctor from out-of-state, the dancer and her family learn how far they are willing to go in the name of love.

During the advent of Chicano teatro, dozens of groups sprang up across the country in Chicano/a communities. Since then, teatristas have been leading voices in the creation and production of plays touching minds and hearts that galvanize audiences to action. Barrio Dreams is the first book to collect the work of one of Arizona’s foremost teatristas, playwright Silviana Wood. During her decades-long involvement in theater, Wood forged a reputation as a playwright, actor, director, and activist. Her works form a testimonio of Chicana life, steeped in art, politics, and the borderlands. Wood’s plays challenge, question, and incite women to consider their lot in life. She ruptures stereotypes and raises awareness of social issues via humor and with an emphasis on the use of the physical body on stage. The play Una vez, en un barrio de sueños . . . offers a glimpse into familiar terrain—the barrio and its dwellers—in three actos. In Amor de hija, a fraught mother-daughter relationship in contemporary working-class Arizona is dealt an additional blow as the family faces Alzheimer’s disease. In the tragedy A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories, and in the trilingual (Spanish, English, and Yaqui) tragicomedy Yo, Casimiro Flores, characters love, live, die, travel through time and space, and visit the afterlife. And in Anhelos por Oaxaca, a grandfather travels back in time through flashbacks, as he and his grandson travel through homelands from Arizona to Oaxaca. Part of Wood’s genius is the way she portrays life in what Gloria Anzaldúa called “el mundo zurdo,” that space inhabited by the people of color, the poor, the female, and the outsiders. It is a place for the atravesados, the odd, the different, those who do not fit the mainstream. The people who inhabit Wood’s plays are common folk—janitors, mothers, grandmothers, and teenagers—hardworking people who, in one way or another, have made their way in life and who embody life in the barrio.

On March 1, 1966, the voters of Tucson approved the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project—Arizona’s first major urban renewal project—which targeted the most densely populated eighty acres in the state. For close to one hundred years, tucsonenses had created their own spatial reality in the historical, predominantly Mexican American heart of the city, an area most called “la calle.” Here, amid small retail and service shops, restaurants, and entertainment venues, they openly lived and celebrated their culture. To make way for the Pueblo Center’s new buildings, city officials proceeded to displace la calle’s residents and to demolish their ethnically diverse neighborhoods, which, contends Lydia Otero, challenged the spatial and cultural assumptions of postwar modernity, suburbia, and urban planning. Otero examines conflicting claims to urban space, place, and history as advanced by two opposing historic preservationist groups: the La Placita Committee and the Tucson Heritage Foundation. She gives voice to those who lived in, experienced, or remembered this contested area, and analyzes the historical narratives promoted by Anglo American elites in the service of tourism and cultural dominance. La Calle explores the forces behind the mass displacement: an unrelenting desire for order, a local economy increasingly dependent on tourism, and the pivotal power of federal housing policies. To understand how urban renewal resulted in the spatial reconfiguration of downtown Tucson, Otero draws on scholarship from a wide range of disciplines: Chicana/o, ethnic, and cultural studies; urban history, sociology, and anthropology; city planning; and cultural and feminist geography.

Los Angeles magazine is a regional magazine of national stature. Our combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design covers the people, lifestyle, culture, entertainment, fashion, art and architecture, and news that define Southern California. Started in the spring of 1961, Los Angeles magazine has been addressing the needs and interests of our region for 48 years. The magazine continues to be the definitive resource for an affluent population that is intensely interested in a lifestyle that is uniquely Southern Californian.

Gangs continue to commit criminal activity, recruit new members in urban, suburban, and rural regions across the United States, and develop criminal associations that expand their influence over criminal enterprises, particularly street-level drug sales. The most notable trends for 2011 have been the overall increase in gang membership, and the expansion of criminal street gangs' control of street-level drug sales and collaboration with rival gangs and other criminal organizations.