Download or read book T C Boyle s The Tortilla Curtain Urban Conditions Racism and Ecological Disaster in Fortress Los Angeles written by Laura Schomaker and published by diplom.de. This book was released on 2015-02-01 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Los Angeles is famous for its sunny weather, for the Hollywood film studios and for being the residence of the rich and beautiful. And although - or, precisely because - all this is more illusion than reality, the city frequently serves as setting for various pieces of fiction. However, Los Angeles does not only play a huge role in the media, but since lately also in the realm of urban studies. Having long been a kind of ‘outsider’ in the field, it is now regarded as a prototypical example for urban development by the L.A. School. In this context, its image is less sunny and positive, but reveals a deep-rooted racism against Latin-American immigrants in combination with a fortress mentality on the part of its white population as well as a unique urban ecology, in which natural catastrophes seem to be regular occurrences. This paper intends to outline the significance of Los Angeles in urban studies and trace the thereby acquired findings in a fictional representation of the city: T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain. In the process, it is shown how urban conditions, racism and nature, especially in the form of ecological disasters, intersect and influence each other.
Download or read book T C Boyle s the Tortilla Curtain written by Laura Schomaker and published by . This book was released on 2013-09 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,1, University of Duisburg-Essen (Department of Anglophone Studies), course: American Studies, language: English, abstract: Los Angeles, the Californian megalopolis, is famous for its sunny weather, for the Hollywood film studios and for being the residence of the rich and beautiful. And although - or, precisely because - all this is more illusion than reality, the city frequently serves as setting for various pieces of fiction. However, Los Angeles does not only play a huge role in the media, but since lately also in the realm of urban studies. Having long been a kind of 'outsider' in the field, it is now regarded as a prototypical example for urban development by the L.A. School. In this context, its image is less sunny and positive, but reveals a deep-rooted racism against Latin-American immigrants in combination with a fortress mentality on the part of its white population as well as a unique urban ecology, in which natural catastrophes seem to be regular occurrences. This paper now intends to outline the significance of Los Angeles in urban studies and trace the thereby acquired findings in a fictional representation of the city: T.C. Boyle's novel "The Tortilla Curtain." In the process, it is shown how urban conditions, racism and nature, especially in the form of ecological disasters, intersect and influence each other. All in all, this work brings together urban studies and fiction. Thereby, it examines how "The Tortilla Curtain," as a fictitious representation of Los Angeles, partly reflects the reality of the metropolis as well as urban theory. In this sense, it is concluded that fiction can be an important account of urban problems and their possible solutions and that "The Tortilla Curtain" has therefore a social and a political message.
Download or read book City of Segregation written by Andrea Gibbons and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A majestic one-hundred-year study of segregation in Los Angeles City of Segregation documents one hundred years of struggle against the enforced separation of racial groups through property markets, constructions of community, and the growth of neoliberalism. This movement history covers the decades of work to end legal support for segregation in 1948; the 1960s Civil Rights movement and CORE’s efforts to integrate LA’s white suburbs; and the 2006 victory preserving 10,000 downtown residential hotel units from gentrification enfolded within ongoing resistance to the criminalization and displacement of the homeless. Andrea Gibbons reveals the shape and nature of the racist ideology that must be fought, in Los Angeles and across the United States, if we hope to found just cities.
Download or read book Southland written by Nina Revoyr and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2003-04-01 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. —Winner of a 2004 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Award in Literature —Winner of the 2003 Lambda Literary Award —Nominated for an Edgar Award The plot line of Southland is the stuff of a James Ellroy or a Walter Mosley novel . . . But the climax fairly glows with the good-heartedness that Revoyr displays from the very first page. —Los Angeles Times Jackie Ishida’s grandfather had a store in Watts where four boys were killed during the riots in 1965, a mystery she attempts to solve. —New York Times Book Review, included in “Where Noir Lives in the City of Angels” Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four black teenagers were killed in the store he ran during the Watts Riots of 1965—and that the murders were never solved or reported. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, she tries to piece together the story of the boys’ deaths. In the process, Jackie unearths the long-held secrets of her family’s history—and her own. Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the means streets of Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.
Download or read book The Dualism of Ecocentrism and Anthropocentrism in T C Boyle s A Friend of the Earth written by Ann-Kathrin Latter and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2019-07-08 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, language: English, abstract: Since our very beginnings as a species, we human beings have always struggled to improve the painful conditions of our existence. But, as we discovered more technologies which helped us live safer lives, this strive for well-being and progress has also led us further and further away from our natural origins, until we have almost found ourselves at war with the Earth, our home planet. It is only in recent years, that we have come to realize how much we have already denuded the earth of its natural resources. Since the first environmentalist movements in the 19th century, there has been an increasing number of systematic efforts to raise our awareness of environmental issues. Scientists like James Lovelock and David Suzuki have outlined the necessity to preserve our ecosystems if we want to survive as a species. And, of course, the popular media have also been used to convey the values of coexistence, sustainability, and respect for the environment. One such book, which advocates the rights and interests of “Mother Nature” or, at least, encourages a public discussion about new ecological policies, is T.C. Boyle’s novel A Friend of the Earth. Judging from the title alone, one might suppose that this book represents a written plea for the application of environmentalist values in our everyday lives. However, the story also contains many incidents when the environmentalists are portrayed in a rather disgraceful light that seems to give substance to the many prevailing negative stigmas against them. Therefore, I analyze how ecocentrism and anthropocentrism are displayed in the book. My main focus will be on the different ways that Boyle treats the two ideologies, respectively, as well as the possibility of a compromise between their standards. Thus, I hope to show that the novel promotes a right balance between anthropocentrism and ecocentrism that resembles the biblical maxim of “human stewardship for nature”.
Download or read book The Tortilla Curtain written by T. Coraghessan Boyle and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lives of two different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.
Download or read book DiverCity Global Cities as a Literary Phenomenon written by Melanie U. Pooch and published by Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner. This book was released on 2016-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work examines global cities as a literary phenomenon, the "DiverCity," based on the reading of selected North American novels. By analyzing Dionne Brand's Toronto in What We All Long For, Chang-rae Lee's New York in Native Speaker, and Karen Tei Yamashita's Los Angeles in Tropic of Orange, Melanie U. Pooch provides the connecting link for exploring the triad of globalization and its effects, global cities as cultural nodal points, and cultural diversity in a globalizing age as a literary phenomenon.
Download or read book Networked Urbanism written by Talja Blokland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite considerable interest in social capital amongst urban policy makers and academics alike, there is currently little direct focus on its urban dimensions. In this volume leading urban researchers from the Netherlands, the UK, the USA, Australia, Italy and France explore the nature of social networks and the significance of voluntary associations for contemporary urban life. Networked Urbanism recognizes that there is currently a sense of crisis in the cohesion of the city which has led to public attempts to encourage networking and the fostering of 'social capital'. However, the contributors collectively demonstrate how new kinds of 'networked urbanism' associated with ghettoization, suburbanization and segregation have broken from the kind of textured urban communities that existed in the past. This has generated new forms of exclusionary social capital, which fail to significantly resolve the problems of poor residents, whilst strengthening the position of the advantaged. Grounded in theoretical reflection and empirical research, Networked Urbanism will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, geography and urban studies, as well as to policy makers.
Download or read book The Sea Came in at Midnight written by Steve Erickson and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIV“If you read one philosophical-doomsday kinky-sex road-trip novel this year, make it this one.” —Salon/divDIV It’s New Year’s Eve 1999, and the members of a powerful cult are about to commit ritual suicide. Fleeing their ranks at the final moment, teenager Kristin lands in Tokyo, where she gains employment listening to clients’ stories in a “memory hotel” designed to address the decay of Japanese collective memory after the Second World War. But Kristin herself has a startling odyssey: Among other things, it involves answering a personal ad only to wind up imprisoned, naked, in an empty house presided over by a man known as the Occupant, hard at work on a millennial calendar that has serious implications for the future. The Sea Came in at Midnight is a breathtaking fable of redemption and one of Erickson’s most impressive visions to date. /div/div
Download or read book A Friend of the Earth written by T. C. Boyle and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-08-01 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: _______________________ 'A comedy with teeth ... razor sharp and darkly funny' (TIMES) 'Boyle's prose is so good and his imagination so fertile that after a while you just sit back and are swept along' (TELEGRAPH) 'Surreal, daring and compassionate. Easily one of the best books of the year' (MAIL) 'Superb ... if Boyle was from this side of the pond, this is the book they'd all have to beat for the Booker Prize' (SUNDAY TIMES) It's 2025, and 75-year-old environmentalist and retired eco-terrorist Ty Tierwater is eking out a bleak living managing a pop star's private zoo. It is the last one in southern California, and vital for the cloning of its captive species. Once, Ty was so serious about environmental causes that as a radical activist committed to Earth Forever! he endangered the lives of both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, when he's just trying to survive in a world cursed by storm and drought, Andrea re-enters his life. Frightening, funny, surreal and gripping, T.C. Boyle's story is both a modern morality tale, and a provocative vision of the future.
Download or read book Odyssey to the North written by Mario Bencastro and published by Arte Publico Press. This book was released on 1998-06-30 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A freedom fighter who fled El Salvador discovers that in the U.S. he is a second-class citizen in a racist country. The novel chronicles his dangerous journey across several borders, all the way to Washington and disillusion.
Download or read book The Virgin of Flames written by Chris Abani and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-01-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of the award-winning GraceLand comes a searing, dazzlingly written novel of a tarnished City of Angels Praised as “singular” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) and “extraordinary” (The New York Times Book Review), GraceLand stunned critics and instantly established Chris Abani as an exciting new voice in fiction. In his second novel, set against the uncompromising landscape of East L.A., Abani follows a struggling artist named Black, whose life and friendships reveal a world far removed from the mainstream. Through Black’s journey of self- discovery, Abani raises essential questions about poverty, religion, and ethnicity in America today. The Virgin of Flames, a marvelous and gritty novel filled with indelible images and unforgettable characters, confirms Chris Abani as an immensely talented writer.
Download or read book The Best American Short Stories 2015 written by T.C. Boyle and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author presents an anthology of “confrontational and at times confounding . . . stories to get lost in” by Colum McCann, Victor Lodato and others (Kirkus Reviews). In his introduction to this one hundredth volume of the beloved Best American Short Stories, guest editor T. C. Boyle writes, “The Model T gave way to the Model A and to the Ferrari and the Prius . . . modernism to postmodernism and post-postmodernism. We advance. We progress. We move on. But we are part of a tradition.” Boyle’s choices of stories reflect a vibrant range of characters, from a numb wife who feels alive only in the presence of violence to a new widower coming to terms with his sudden freedom, from a missing child to a champion speedboat racer. These stories will grab hold and surprise, which according to Boyle is “what the best fiction offers, and there was no shortage of such in this year’s selections.” The Best American Short Stories 2011 includes entries by Denis Johnson, Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth McCracken, Aria Beth Sloss, Thomas McGuane, and others.
Download or read book White Diaspora written by Catherine Jurca and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to analyze our suburban literary tradition. Tracing the suburb's emergence as a crucial setting and subject of the twentieth-century American novel, Catherine Jurca identifies a decidedly masculine obsession with the suburban home and a preoccupation with its alternative--the experience of spiritual and emotional dislocation that she terms "homelessness." In the process, she challenges representations of white suburbia as prostrated by its own privileges. In novels as disparate as Tarzan (written by Tarzana, California, real-estate developer Edgar Rice Burroughs), Richard Wright's Native Son, and recent fiction by John Updike and Richard Ford, Jurca finds an emphasis on the suburb under siege, a place where the fortunate tend to see themselves as powerless. From Babbitt to Rabbit, the suburban novel casts property owners living in communities of their choosing as dispossessed people. Material advantages become artifacts of oppression, and affluence is fraudulently identified as impoverishment. The fantasy of victimization reimagines white flight as a white diaspora. Extending innovative trends in the study of nineteenth-century American culture, Jurca's analysis suggests that self-pity has played a constitutive role in white middle-class identity in the twentieth century. It breaks new ground in literary history and cultural studies, while telling the story of one of our most revered and reviled locations: "the little suburban house at number one million and ten Volstead Avenue" that Edith Wharton warned would ruin American life and letters.
Download or read book City of Quartz written by Mike Davis and published by Random House. This book was released on 1998 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recounts the story of Los Angeles. He tells a tale of greed, manipulation, power and prejudice that has made Los Angeles one of the most cosmopolitan and most class-divided cities in the United States.
Download or read book Picturepedia written by Dorling Kindersley and published by . This book was released on 2015-09-23 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore the wonders of history, space, the natural world and more with Picturepedia. Packed with over 10,000 stunning photographs and illustrations, it's a mini-encyclopedia for kids on every page! From astonishing insects and outer-space to musical instruments and fascinating animals, Picturepedia explains every topic under (and including) the sun. Uncover the secrets of prehistoric life using photographs, explore the human body through graphics and discover galleries of musical instruments in Picturepedia. Ideal for homework, projects or young curious minds, Picturepedia is a must-have encyclopedia for kids.
Download or read book Amnesiascope written by Steve Erickson and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVDIVA washed-up novelist navigates the dreamscape of a cataclysm-ravaged Los Angeles /divDIV In the apocalyptic Los Angeles of Amnesiascope, time zones multiply freely, spectral figures roam the streets, and rings of fire separate the city from the rest of the country. The narrator, a former novelist, lives in a hotel and writes film criticism for a newspaper whose offices are located in a bombed-out theater. Viv, his girlfriend, is a sexually voracious artist, and together the two are collaborating on an avant-garde pornographic film. But in this world, what’s real and what’s merely the conjuring of the protagonist’s imagination—obsessed with dreams, movies, sex, and remembrance—is far from clear. At once outrageous and hypnotically lyrical, Amnesiascope enflames the reader’s memory. /div/div
