Robert Lemon
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042454
- eISBN:
- 9780252051296
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042454.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the ...
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When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the traditional taco truck is also a politically charged symbolic space that can spark heated debates about Latino culture and the uses of street spaces in cities. This book uses the taco truck as a vehicle to tell a story about the Mexican American experience and identity and deconstructs the myriad meanings taco trucks represent to diverse community groups and how such meanings influence urban politics and the built environment. The traditional taco truck is a powerfully transformative feature of the American landscape because the trucks’ social spaces intersect with complex geographic processes of immigration, class, ethnicity, gentrification, commodification, food-ways, and the right to public space. Thus the book is also about power, privilege, and the political economy of cities and the novel ways marginalized Mexican immigrants take and remake urban space through their food practices. Through investigating taco trucks in various U.S. metropolises, this book elucidates the ways neoliberal cities work and how Mexican immigrants claim their right to the city.Less
When primarily immigrant, day-laboring clientele eat a meal at a traditional taco truck, the taco truck becomes a significant social space in which Mexican cultural identity is reaffirmed. But the traditional taco truck is also a politically charged symbolic space that can spark heated debates about Latino culture and the uses of street spaces in cities. This book uses the taco truck as a vehicle to tell a story about the Mexican American experience and identity and deconstructs the myriad meanings taco trucks represent to diverse community groups and how such meanings influence urban politics and the built environment. The traditional taco truck is a powerfully transformative feature of the American landscape because the trucks’ social spaces intersect with complex geographic processes of immigration, class, ethnicity, gentrification, commodification, food-ways, and the right to public space. Thus the book is also about power, privilege, and the political economy of cities and the novel ways marginalized Mexican immigrants take and remake urban space through their food practices. Through investigating taco trucks in various U.S. metropolises, this book elucidates the ways neoliberal cities work and how Mexican immigrants claim their right to the city.
Robert Lemon
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780252042454
- eISBN:
- 9780252051296
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042454.003.0009
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It ...
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The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It addresses the ways in which taco trucks alter streetscapes through geographic concepts of the street and the economic flows of the capitalist city. Additionally, the chapter assesses issues of gentrification and the commodification of immigrant food-ways, as well as the way in which taste preferences transform the built environment. It demonstrates that by examining taco trucks, we can see that our ordinary landscapes and our humdrum, everyday routines are actually quite remarkable. Overall, the conclusion argues that taco trucks are prominent features of the American cultural landscape because they profoundly transform as well as reflect the ways neoliberal cities work.Less
The conclusion summarizes the chapters in the book through comparing and contrasting how taco truck owners employ their mobility to navigate culturally and politically distinct urban environments. It addresses the ways in which taco trucks alter streetscapes through geographic concepts of the street and the economic flows of the capitalist city. Additionally, the chapter assesses issues of gentrification and the commodification of immigrant food-ways, as well as the way in which taste preferences transform the built environment. It demonstrates that by examining taco trucks, we can see that our ordinary landscapes and our humdrum, everyday routines are actually quite remarkable. Overall, the conclusion argues that taco trucks are prominent features of the American cultural landscape because they profoundly transform as well as reflect the ways neoliberal cities work.
Julia A. Stern
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226773285
- eISBN:
- 9780226773315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226773315.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter takes up Mary Chesnut's images of seeds in order to move from their floral to their fruitful significance as crucial motifs in the 1880s narrative. The seeds in question here have ...
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This chapter takes up Mary Chesnut's images of seeds in order to move from their floral to their fruitful significance as crucial motifs in the 1880s narrative. The seeds in question here have ripened into edible artifacts, and they preoccupy the 1860s Chesnut well before food actually grows scarce in Richmond and Columbia in the winter of 1864–65. Through a series of scenes featuring the unexpected gifts of garden-fresh provisions, particularly seeded and stone fruits and delicate spring peas and asparagus, the 1880s writer reveals the way in which this rarified diet, enabled by the generosity of privileged friends, set her apart from even the most elite Confederates with whom she traveled. Similarly, the writer's ethnographic account of her Northern-born mother-in-law's gustatory habits, unchanged despite sixty years on a Southern plantation, constitute an incisive picture of the link between food ways and identity.Less
This chapter takes up Mary Chesnut's images of seeds in order to move from their floral to their fruitful significance as crucial motifs in the 1880s narrative. The seeds in question here have ripened into edible artifacts, and they preoccupy the 1860s Chesnut well before food actually grows scarce in Richmond and Columbia in the winter of 1864–65. Through a series of scenes featuring the unexpected gifts of garden-fresh provisions, particularly seeded and stone fruits and delicate spring peas and asparagus, the 1880s writer reveals the way in which this rarified diet, enabled by the generosity of privileged friends, set her apart from even the most elite Confederates with whom she traveled. Similarly, the writer's ethnographic account of her Northern-born mother-in-law's gustatory habits, unchanged despite sixty years on a Southern plantation, constitute an incisive picture of the link between food ways and identity.
Julia A. Stern
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226773285
- eISBN:
- 9780226773315
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226773315.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
Wartime provisions as elemental as peaches and as confected as “moonshines” all played a role in Mary Chesnut's catalogue of the food ways of the Confederate elite. Beyond affording documentary ...
More
Wartime provisions as elemental as peaches and as confected as “moonshines” all played a role in Mary Chesnut's catalogue of the food ways of the Confederate elite. Beyond affording documentary detail of an aspect of bellum social history rarely included in the works of her memoir-writing contemporaries, food for the writer of the 1880s almost always bore social and political meaning. But Chesnut's compendium of convivial meals and edible gifts consumed over four years of strife constituted just one of several of the lists that contributed to the epic significance of the reworked 1880s narrative. Another of the writer's encyclopedic inventories can be summarized under the heading “words.” In her 1880s narrative, Chesnut explored assorted practices of reading and writing, which for her transcended their basic, communicative function.Less
Wartime provisions as elemental as peaches and as confected as “moonshines” all played a role in Mary Chesnut's catalogue of the food ways of the Confederate elite. Beyond affording documentary detail of an aspect of bellum social history rarely included in the works of her memoir-writing contemporaries, food for the writer of the 1880s almost always bore social and political meaning. But Chesnut's compendium of convivial meals and edible gifts consumed over four years of strife constituted just one of several of the lists that contributed to the epic significance of the reworked 1880s narrative. Another of the writer's encyclopedic inventories can be summarized under the heading “words.” In her 1880s narrative, Chesnut explored assorted practices of reading and writing, which for her transcended their basic, communicative function.
