Boyle Heights

In his most recent book Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy, renowned Los Angeles historian George J. Sánchez addresses how Boyle Heights became a multiracial neighborhood and influenced social, cultural, and political movements in Los Angeles. Sánchez asks, what historical factors shaped relationships between multiracial residents in Boyle Heights and what led to building cross-racial relationships? Sánchez’s knack for storytelling—each chapter beautifully laid out with a narrative story—helps the reader understand larger issues of race, space, and multiracial history in L.A. He begins with the premise that Los Angeles isn’t just a story of segregated barrios, rather a history of working and middle-class neighborhoods where racialized groups were brought together by shared struggles. Sánchez carefully walks us through infrastructure (bridges, railroads, real estate) that promoted a White Los Angeles and pushed an industrial Boyle Heights. Where White middle-class families flocked to the Westside, Boyle Heights remained open to the “racially undesirable” despite the boom of racially restrictive covenants after 1902 (p. 32).

Art · Art history · Democracy · Estate · George (robot) · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation) · Gender Studies · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Race, History, and American Society · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies