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University of Texas Press
The following review appeared in the January 2023 issue of CHOICE. The review is for your internal use only. Please review our Permission and Reprints Guidelines or email permissions@ala-choice.org.
Humanities
Communication
Padilla (English and Latino studies, Univ. of Arkansas, Fayetteville) offers a well-researched, poignant discussion of the representations, misrepresentations, and erasures of the expanding Central American and Latinx communities in the US. Her work seamlessly illustrates the significance and consequences of these representations, or lack thereof, and covers the portrayals of housekeepers in films and television; discourses about US war heroes from Central America; the double erasures of and double dangers for Central American migrants crossing Mexico into the US, where their legal statuses are often vulnerable; and artistic representations of Central American immigrant communities in Los Angeles. Misrepresentations and missing representations perpetuate the cycle of ignorance, misunderstanding, and fear, to which many politicians pander in their election endeavors. Though the book was mostly written before the institution of the child separation policy during the Trump Administration and the current busing of migrants from border states to northern cities, it sets the stage for understanding how such policies can happen.
--K. Sorensen, Bentley University