PositiveThe AtlanticIncredibly timely ... Over 768 pages, Grandin gives us the sweep of history: the bloodshed of colonization, the movements for independence, manifest destiny in the U.S. and caudillo rule in Latin America, a pair of world wars, the Cold War, and the growing polarization of the 21st century ... This is a big and unwieldy book—and it could have made for arid reading. But Grandin has a knack for enlivening theory with anecdotes that are both enlightening and appalling ... what makes América, America instructive is Grandin’s focus on the way that Latin American thinkers have advocated for important social rights from the very foundation of their republics ... One particularly illuminating chapter traces the way that liberation theology, Marxist economic theory, and Latin American literature came together in the 1960s to articulate \'the intangible ways patriarchs, dictators, landlords, and foreign capital maintained their rule\' ... For now, Grandin has no more answers than anyone else. America, América focuses more on big-picture ideology than on the nitty-gritty mechanics of resistance ... There is a lot of material left to explore when it comes to overcoming the latest setbacks in the American continents’ slow progress toward freedom.
Alia Trabucco Zerán
RaveThe AtlanticExposes...contemporary cultural fault lines that are just as destabilizing and, in their immediacy, more urgent ... In another writer’s hands, Clean would be a good-enough parable about inequality and domestic work. But Trabucco Zerán is masterful at plunging the reader into the murky depths of her characters’ psyches and at rendering disquieting acts with sangfroid ... Deeply compelling ... Haunting.
Sammy Harkham
RaveThe Los Angeles TimesHarkham adds the language of cinema, including intercutting and match cuts (where the formal elements of one scene are echoed in the next for visual continuity) ... Visual sequences, in which dialogue is kept to a bare minimum or dispensed with entirely, are among the most powerful in the book ... Epic in scale for a graphic novel — checking in at nearly 300 pages. Harkham spent 14 years on it, and the labor pays off
Manuel Muñoz
RaveThe Los Angeles Times\"in the work of Manuel Muñoz, the Central Valley is a recurring character of enigmatic presence ... Lucid and elegantly written, The Consequences tells the stories of characters who ache for one another or for ephemeral moments of release; who ache — bodily — from a life spent harvesting the sweetness that will grace other tables ... A valley is negative space. Muñoz gives it palpable texture.\
Alexandra Lange
RaveLos Angeles TimesLange provides a smart and accessible cultural history — outlining the social, economic and architectural forces that led to the creation of U.S. malls as we know them. But she also looks forward ... Meet Me by the Fountain isn’t just a timeline of dudes with visions of malls dancing in their heads ... Lange has a perceptive eye for how spaces are designed — and for whom ... Lange examines what malls have meant for women as sites of professional advancement and how mall design — with its broad doors, gentle ramps, plentiful seating and generous air conditioning — can make them hospitable places for seniors to socialize ... A particularly intriguing thread in Meet Me By the Fountain examines malls’ complicity in segregation ... Lange doesn’t have a false nostalgia for malls. Meet Me by the Fountain is frank about how they have usurped public space. But at a time when malls still serve the function of bringing us together, Lange’s book is a thoughtful guide to helping them do what the best of them already have — but better.
