The culture wars continue to rage across the United States. Clashes over hate speech regulations, affirmative action, abortion, immigration, art, history, and lifestyle questions suggest that America is more polarized than ever before. This study looks at the rapid changes occurring in cities and suburbs in order to understand these cultural conflicts which, according to Rodriguez, have arisen in part because Americans continue to view themselves as city people or suburbanites in a time when the two areas are converging. As suburbs draw more businesses and residents, they produce new forms of art and cultural events which longtime residents resist as undermining the essentially residential quality of suburbs. Similarly, in cities, new parking structures, highways, and downtown malls produce suburban landscapes that urbanites reject, seeing those changes as evidence of the intrusion of suburban culture. Four community conflicts in the Bay Area from the 1960s to the 1990s illustrate these changes.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, freeways and rapid transit have brought city and suburb closer together. Local residents have resisted these changes that threaten their communities' original identities. In San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and Concord, residents have clashed over the construction of freeways and rapid transit, urban and suburban redevelopment, affirmative action, and modern art. In each locality, rapid changes produced conflict over local identities, as white, black, and Chicano residents have attempted to maintain a clear distinction between urban and suburban culture in the face of forces that are driving city and suburb closer together.

City Against Suburb: The Culture Wars in an American Metropolis

History

Rodriguez, Joseph

Americas

Praeger

Spanning four continents and several years in the lives of seven immigrant families, The New Americans is at once the most globe-trotting and intimate introduction to the new American immigration. Emmy Award–winning journalist Rubén Martínez’s “powerful and perceptive chronicle” (Booklist) lyrically recounts the dramatic voyages and day-to-day experiences of a small group of families who were featured in the PBS documentary of the same name. They come from Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, India, and the Dominican Republic, and wind up in Chicago, Montana, Silicon Valley, and the California badlands. Their stories—told with “enthralling” (Publishers Weekly) literary skill and illustrated with stunning portraits from award-winning photographer Joseph Rodriguez—paint a portrait of the new, multicultural America.
Martinez weaves his own family’s moving immigrant history into the book, and essays on the films of Indian American director Mira Nair, the contemporary corridos of Mexican border musicians Los Tigres del Norte, and other immigrant artists explore the ways the new immigrant culture is transforming the United States.

The New Americans

Martínez, Rubén

The New Press

"Fresh, nuanced and insightful….[A] thoughtful, readable contribution to the immigration debates. —Houston Chronicle Spanning four continents and several years in the lives of seven immigrant families, The New Americans is at once the most globe-trotting and intimate introduction to the new American immigration. Emmy award-winning journalist Rubén Martínez's "powerful and perceptive chronicle" (Booklist) lyrically recounts the dramatic voyages and day-to-day experiences of a small group of families who were featured in the PBS documentary of the same name. They come from Mexico, Nigeria, Palestine, India, and the Dominican Republic, and wind up in Chicago, Montana, Silicon Valley, and the California badlands. Their stories—told with "enthralling" (Publishers Weekly) literary skill, and illustrated with stunning portraits from award-winning photographer Joseph Rodriguez—paint a portrait of the new, multicultural America. Martínez weaves his own family's moving immigrant history into the book, and essays on the films of Indian American director Mira Nair, the contemporary corridos of Mexican border musicians Los Tigres del Norte, and other immigrant artists explore the ways the new immigrant culture is transforming the United States.

The New Americans: Seven Families Journey to Another Country

New Press, The

In his interview, Luis Rodríguez explains that the demonization and false glorification of gang life has done much disservice to the termination of gang activity, activity which he defines as "90% boredom." What's the key to reducing gang violence and improving inner-city lives? To the dissolution of jail time as a right of passage? Part of the solution lies in providing better education, in teachers able to tap into and help direct the overlooked creativity of inner-city communities. A great responsibility lies, as well, in a national understanding and support for communities bound by poverty, and in encouraging people to work together to help people work for themselves.

East Side Stories: Gang Life in East LA

Politics & Social Sciences

Rodríguez, Luis J.

Social Sciences

Power House Books

When Brooklyn-raised photographer Joseph Rodriguez first debuted his body of work shot in Spanish Harlem in the 1980s, it changed the face of documentary photography. Grit, elegy, celebration, pride, lurking cataclysm—all embedded in the portrait of a place and the people. Now, three decades later, Rodriguez and powerHouse Books are revisiting that groundbreaking series: unearthing huge new caches of images, and re-editing and showcasing the body of work in a beautiful, deluxe monograph, reframing the project as one that pushed beyond documentary into the realm of fine art. Over 30 years since the project began, Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the 80s finally brings this unparalleled endeavor to fruition. Spanish Harlem, New York’s oldest barrio, is the U.S. mecca where Puerto Ricans first established themselves in the 1940s. One of America's most vital centers of Latino culture, Spanish Harlem is home to 125,000 people, half of whom are Latino. Shot in the mid-to-late 80s, Joseph Rodriguez’s superb photographs bring us into the core of the neighborhood, capturing a spirit of a people that survives despite the ravages of poverty, and more recently, the threat of gentrification and displacement. In a now-distant landscape littered with abandoned buildings, ominous alleyways, and the plague of addiction, the residents of Spanish Harlem persevered with flamboyant style and gritty self-reliance. The heart of the work comes from Rodriguez’s intimacy and access. The trust and familiarity he built with his subjects—repeated visits with no camera, then no photographing, then little by little, a peek here, a shot there—allowed him to transcend surface level sheen and exploitation to capture images that reveal the essence of the neighborhood and of the era. That access paired with a sharp eye for detail and composition, and the practiced and disciplined ability to find the perfect moment, led to the creation of an entirely unique and breathtaking narrative. From idyllic scenes of children playing under the sprinklers on the playground, or performing the Bomba Plena on “Old Timer’s Day,” to shocking images of men shooting up speedballs and children dying of AIDS, Rodriguez reveals a day in the life of the barrio in the 1980s.

Spanish Harlem: El Barrio in the '80s

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

powerHouse Books

Joseph Rodriguez drove a cab from 1977 to 1987 and he marveled at all he witnessed. With a passion for art and storytelling, he picked up a camera and started to study in the early 80s. Inspired to be a photographer like his heroes: Louis Hine, Jacob Riis, Helen Levitt, Andreas Feininger, Robert Frank, Wee Gee, and Bruce Davidson. His first subject: the life of New York as seen from his yellow cab. New York City in the late '70s was a collection of villages with its downtown scene, midtown workers, and uptown elegance. It was also a city that was more integrated than ever before or ever would be again. All of the city's humanity met in its streets with layered soundtracks of salsa, rock, disco, reggae, and soon hip-hop booming for all to groove to. But, NYC was also a place of chaos and mayhem. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy with rampant crime it was the city's drug users, dealers, and pimps and prostitutes who ruled the streets of Manhattan. The grittiness of the city was a beacon and a promise to many outsiders, those that didn't quite fit into any mold and a vibrant LGBTQ community became the nexus of an underworld of sex workers who liked to party. For a NYC cabbie such as Joseph Rodriguez, the hot spots to pick up fares were clubs like the Hellfire, Mineshaft, The Anvil, The Vault, and Show World. Losing his first camera and lens in a classic '70s New York stabbing and mugging, Rodriguez's wounds healed and he armed himself with a new camera to document what he saw on the job: hookers getting off their shifts, transvestites and S&amp;M partiers doin' it in the back seat or somehow pulling off an unlikely costume change from bondage gear to emerge from the cab clean-cut in an oxford and khakis ready to face unwitting family and friends. A humanist at heart, his photographs speak of the dignity of the city's working class from all the boroughs and those struggling to get by.

Taxi: Journey Through My Windows 1977-1987

Price, Richard

Spanish Harlem, New York's oldest barrio, is home to some 120,000 people, half of whom are of Latino origin. To live in Spanish Harlem is to confront some of the city's worst problems: crime, drug abuse, AIDS, chronic unemployment. But Spanish Harlem also serves as the "capital of Hispanic America." The mecca where Puerto Ricans first settled is now shared with African Americans and new arrivals from Latin America. Each year, former residents of Spanish Harlem return for "Old Timer's Day," a celebration of the flamboyance and the gritty self-reliance of the neighborhood. Joseph Rodriguez's photographs bring the reader inside Spanish Harlem - from the Good Friday procession, to the Dominoe social club, to the dance called the Bomba Plena, to vibrant stoop life in the neighborhood. Spanish Harlem remembers its past even as a new future is forged. On a street corner, an ice cream cart sign reads: "Puerto Rico is my enchanted. Here is where I stay."

Spanish Harlem (American Scene, 3)

Yunqué, Edgardo Vega

National Museum of American Art

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