A Contextualization of Nina Revoyr's Southland

The autobiographical essays in “The Girls in My Town” by Angela Morales creates her violent personality over time, ranging from childhood to adulthood. As a little girl she always took everything from everyone dealing with bullies and her crazy father. The type of violence she deals with is domestic and emotional abuse from her father. She goes on to write about her parent’s appliance store and how she escaped from it developing a different personality. She as well writes about her experiences in the bowling alley that she feels made her safer. She remembers fighting for equal rights for girls as a sixth grader, calling the cops when her parents fought. Morales did not live an easy live she had to deal with the daily girl problems during her time and the fact of her parents being divorced which she described as an excellent relationship when in reality it was not.

Marisol is a young, assimilated hispanic woman in 1990’s New York who works a white collar job in Manhattan and lives in the Bronx. She doesn’t have family or loved ones living close to her except her friend and colleague, June. One night she has an unfortunate

“Where Worlds Collide” is an essay by Pico Iyer who talks about the expectations and reality of Los Angeles through the perspectives of travelers from different backgrounds. In “Where Worlds Collide,” Pico Iyer argues that even though Los Angeles is depicted as a vicinity to receive wealth, happiness, and many opportunities- it is actually the antithesis, and instead, many harsh prejudice and unending craziness will occur instead; Iyer argues this by using allusions, anaphoras, and juxtapositions to help convey what he is saying.

Popular media allow for the general public to be able to properly digest the matters of racial prejudice that are prevalent in our society. There are various ways that racial prejudices are exposed through actions and the structures in society that stems from the perceptions that race is this biological hierarchical supremacy. Additionally, these race classifications that are made by those in power has structured society in a way that puts some in advantage and many at a disadvantage that has continued into modern society. These are disadvantages are revealed through such things as microagressions and socioeconomic structures that favored and continues to favor the “dominant” classes. These matters can be best expressed through personal experiences relating to experienced prejudice, such as Lorraine Hansberry conveying artistically her experience with racial housing issues in Chicago. In her play, The Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry reveals through the Younger family, such issues as community acceptance, lost dreams, and racial discrimination on an economic level. Bruce Norris’s play, Clybourne Park, considers these issues as well as he expands on Hansberry’s world in his personal adaptation of The Raisin in the Sun’s primary plot point. Through experiences shared in the Younger’s future home, Norris explores privilege, systematic racism, white flight, community, and gentrification. Through reference and analysis of Raisin in the Sun and then of Clybourne Park, followed by

The Glory Field by Walter Dean Myers best conveys the character traits of courage, ambitiousness, and supporting family even when times appear to be distressful. This book takes you through African American history with the excitement and thrill of fiction. It allows you to witness the glory of African American evolution, from a period of slavery to modern day. The reader witnesses courage as African Americans try and fight for freedom and equality in an unforgiving society. African Americans try and defy the society’s perspective of them in an attempt to reach an optimal level of success. They work to divert from their typical expectations, and strive for success even when the possibilities are minimal. They strive to build a better living besides being maids and factory workers, and they attempt to remove every obstacle in their way of success. They desire to go above what is expected of them, so they can achieve at a prodigious level in a segregated society. Even as technology advances, the reader witnesses the character’s sense of community. They always believe that family is crucial to success even in times of distress. If they abandon their community, then they abandon the only people that support them. In this time period, their community was composed of the only people that cared about them. The African American society emulates these traits throughout this book, as the author inserts you into their fight for equity and freedom. The Glory Field takes

The author of Honor and the American Dream, Ruth Horowitz, takes us to Chicago’s Chicano community of 32nd Street in the

Stylistically, Revoyr’s deliberate prose permits readers an uncomfortable gratitude of the slow marks racism burns on the appearance of a community. Both the Japanese and African-American characters in book Southland wear the marks of prejudice, from removal to internment camps to LA rebellion racial profiling (Revoyr, 2003, pg. 68). Her prejudiced white cop character Nick Lawson does not brave out and speak his hate in a quick, convenient slur; rather, she permits his expressions and sensitively disposition to shape through small, hostile gestures. When eventually he fires off his descriptions, revealing to abandoned witnesses his real feelings, the sickening permits any reader may harbor is well earned (Ranford, 1994, pg. 67). Racism is not certainly the quick match and moment when their neighborhoods erupt into a form of riot in Southland; for Revoyr’s, it appears gradually, on a slowly accumulating bed of fuel.

While today Los Angeles is prided on being one of the most diverse cities in the United States, there was (and still is) a tremendous amount of resistance that had to be overcome. Society’s inclination to maintain homogeneity along with the testing of loyalties and allegiance through pressures of war have proven great obstacles in the evolution of what is now a majority-minority city. Nina Revoyr’s Southland gives a historic fictional recount of Los Angeles’ most tested times from perspectives looking in to the past, present, and future. The discovery of unpleasant truths through grave social injustices provide a painful reminder of Los Angeles’ history and consequently a warning for future setbacks. Southland is an emotional testament to the inescapability of discrimination within stratified cities and the unspoken necessity of assimilation that occurs as a result.

In the film “Mi Familia,” we follow the story of the Mexican-American Sánchez family who settled in East Los Angeles, California after immigrating to the United States. Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas introduce the story of this family in several contexts that are developed along generations. These generations hold significant historical periods that form the identity of each individual member of the family. We start off by exploring the immigrant experience as the family patriarch heads north to Los Angeles, later we see how national events like the great depression directly impact Maria as she gets deported, although she was a US citizen. The events that follow further oppress this family and begins separate identity formations. These

Jacqueline Woodson was born in Columbus, Ohio to Jack Woodson and Mary Ann Irby. She has an older brother named Hope and an older sister names Odella. Only a year after Jacqueline’s birth, her parents separated and she and her siblings moved to her mother’s parents’ home in Greenville, South Carolina. Though slavery ended a century before and the Civil Rights Movement has already begun, racism and discrimination are rampant in the South. The children are left with their grandparents for long stretches as their mother explores New York. Eventually, Jacqueline’s mother finds a place for the family to live in New York, and she moves her children there. Besides adapting to life in New York, where Jacqueline and her siblings feel out of place due

Crossroads and “Champion of the World” both explore African American culture, the competition between races, and the different African American careers, which helps the reader remove racial biases with a richer understanding of the diversity of their culture.

In contrast, the grandmother states that the blacks did not have things like the whites do (p.2118), putting the blacks down infront of her grandchildren, associating the blacks with poverty. We see how the grandmother fails to treat the blacks equally as human, solely because of their social status, as she perceives them merely as an inanimate object - a picture.

A mother drives her three kids to soccer practice in a Ford minivan while her husband stays at the office, rushing to finish a report. Meanwhile, a young woman prays her son makes his way home from the local grocery without getting held up at knife point by the local gang. Nearby, an immigrant finishes another 14-hour shift at the auto parts factory, trying to provide for his wife and child, struggling to make way in a new land. Later, a city girl hails a cab to meet her girlfriends at their favorite club to celebrate her new promotion over cosmopolitans. These people – the suburban soccer mom, the tired immigrant, the worried mother from the hood, and the successful city girl – each represent the

With the increase of Mexican immigrants present around Topanga Canyon, the residents of the suburban gated community, Arroyo Blanco, begin to feel as though their suburban space and spatial identities are being threatened. In an effort to combat that threat, the residents of Arroyo Blanco redefine their space and build a wall around their community. Through Arroyo Blanco's residents' Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher's experiences with Cándido Rincón, José Navidad, and the coyotes surrounding the Arroyo Blanco community of Topanga Canyon, Boyle conveys the futility of erecting walls as a way to preserve suburban space and suburban spatial identities in a post-suburban environment like Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was the first product off the assembly line of American urban planning. Turned on in the late 19th century, the city-making machine was fueled by an immense immigration of people who sought to create a new type of city out of the previously quaint pueblo. They also strove to craft the first major city developed primarily by Americans and outside of European archetypes. As a result, Los Angles is not only incredibly diverse, but also nearly impossible to define. Since it is a product of the American machine, understanding the community of Los Angeles becomes vital to understanding the United States. But to fully comprehend the present Los Angeles, one must look at the process that created it. Specifically, Los Angeles was