This book tells of story of a groundbreaking event in Chicano history. Here, for the first time, is the complete history of "Con Safos: Reflections of Life in the Barrio" the first ever Chicano literary magazine. Created by a legendary group of furiously independent barrio intellectuals and artists, connected to no established group and working on their own dime,10 magazine issues were produced in the late 1960s and 1970s in East Los Angeles. Many writers and artists who would later become well-known were first published in "Con Safos." Bilingual, using Calo' and the slang of the barrios, "Con Safos" helped to bring to attention an important inner vision of the barrio, Mexican American family life, "El Movimiento" --the Chicano civil rights protest movement-- and "El Moratorium" the Chicano movement against the Vietnam War. It used humor as its sword to tilt at establishment windmills. It made fun of everything--even itself as it took on the most serious questions of the day including racism and discrimination. There were those that hated it and those that loved it, but everybody read it. As it became the "Voice of the Barrio" it helped create a Chicano aesthetic enhancing the much-needed development of Chicano identity. In the last chapter, "Con Safos" "vatos" tell what they are doing now. Their contemporary lives reflect and illuminate the persistence of creativity through the life span in these Chicano men.

"The first-ever anthology of plays by Chicana playwright Silviana Wood"--Provided by publisher.

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class" of young professionals who revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. Award-winning historian A. K. Sandoval-Strausz reveals this history by focusing on two barrios: Chicago's Little Village and Dallas's Oak Cliff. These neighborhoods lost residents and jobs for decades before Latin American immigration turned them around beginning in the 1970s. As Sandoval-Strausz shows, Latinos made cities dynamic, stable, and safe by purchasing homes, opening businesses, and reviving street life. Barrio America uses vivid oral histories and detailed statistics to show how the great Latino migrations transformed America for the better.

The hit movie La Bamba (based on the life of Richie Valens), the versatile singer Linda Ronstadt, and the popular rock group Los Lobos all have roots in the dynamic music of the Mexican-American community in East Los Angeles. With the recent "Eastside Renaissance" in the area, barrio music has taken on symbolic power throughout the Southwest, yet its story has remained undocumented and virtually untold. In Barrio Rhythm, Steven Loza brings this hidden history to life, demonstrating the music's essential role in the cultural development of East Los Angeles and its influence on mainstream popular culture. Drawing from oral histories and other primary sources, as well as from appropriate representative songs, Loza provides a historical overview of the music from the nineteenth century to the present and offers in-depth profiles of nine Mexican-American artists, groups, and entrepreneurs in Southern California from the post-World War II era to the present. His interviews with many of today's most influential barrio musicians, including members of Los Lobos, Eddie Cano, Lalo Guerrero, and Willie chronicle the cultural forces active in this complex urban community.

This collection explores Chicano, Mexican, and Cuban musical forms and styles and their transformation in the United States. Employing musical, historical, and sociocultural analyses, Loza addresses issues such as marginality, identity, intercultural conflict and aesthetics, reinterpretation, postnationalism, and mestizaje--the mixing of race and culture--in the production and reception of Chicano/Latino music. Barrio Harmonics opens with a comprehensive overview that begins with music in the US Southwest in the seventeenth century and ends with the Grammy Awards for Latin American music in the first decade of the twenty-first century. In the following chapters, Loza discusses artists whose music ranges from sones, rancheros, and corridos to Latin jazz, R & B, and rock and roll. Among those he considers in depth are Pancho Sánchez, Lalo Guerrero, Tito Puente, and Los Lobos. He also surveys the contributions of scores of other individuals and groups who have shaped the current contour of Chicano/Latino music. Other topics include the music industry and the impact of globalization, the African diaspora, and Latin American music in Japan. In addition, Loza offers a candid assessment of intellectual capitalism and the void of nonwestern voices in contemporary scholarship.

Many interesting and colorful things happen each day in the neighborhood.