Join us as Dr. Llana Barber shares her insights and invites us to explore the parallels between Holyoke and Lawrence in the recent past.
We will gather at 5:00 PM for a book signing.  Book talk and conversation begin at 5:30.
"Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945–2000 explores the transformation of Lawrence, Massachusetts, into New England’s first Latino-majority city. Like many industrial cities, Lawrence entered a downward economic spiral in the decades after World War II. The arrival of tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the late twentieth century brought new life to the struggling city, but settling in Lawrence meant facing hostility from their neighbors, exclusion from local governance, inadequate city services, and limited job prospects. Latinos fought and organized for the right to make a home in the city.
In this book, Llana Barber interweaves the histories of urban crisis in U.S. cities and imperial migration from Latin America.  Pushed to migrate by political and economic circumstances, poor and working-class Latinos then had to reckon with segregation, joblessness, disinvestment, and profound stigma.  For many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, there was no “American Dream” awaiting them in Lawrence; instead, Latinos struggled to build lives for themselves in the ruins of industrial America. "
 
Llana Barber completed her Ph.D. at Boston College and is Assistant Professor of American Studies at SUNY-Old Westbury.