Yellow Cab

by Robert Leonard

In 2001, anthropology professor Robert Leonard began moonlighting as a cabdriver; Yellow Cab is a portrait of the city he found as he drove the streets of nighttime Albuquerque, picking up everyone from business people and drunken college kids to hookers and drug dealers. In this mixed bag of rich vignettes and interludes of poetry, Leonard offers sharp insights into the workings of the hidden world of an American city after dark.
"With an ethnographer's eye for fine details and a writer's ear for words, Robert Leonard's portraits of Albuquerque's cabdrivers and their passengers ring every bit as true as the writings of Joseph Mitchell and Joseph Liebling about varieties of life in New York City. Thoughtful, compelling, and irresistibly authentic."--Keith H. Basso, Regents Professor of Anthropology, University of New Mexico
"Highly entertaining! . . . Hop aboard a bright yellow Crown Vic and buckle up for a nighttime journey seen through the eyes of a cabbie. You will be the 'fly on the window' as you witness the comical, bizarre, touching, and sometimes painful antics of human nature."--Mike Trujillo, Yellow Cab driver

Genres: Nonfiction

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Sarrah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic UNM Press release that somehow managed to find its way as a donation to my library in Iowa. Yellow Cab is a slice-of-life look at overnight cab driving in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and some of the memorable fares that have sat in Robert Leonard's back seat. It is a little bit of history, a little bit of poetry, and a lot of straightforwardness regarding the human condition. According to the afterword, Leonard considered it not only a means to an end but an anthropological inspection of a part of modern life that people don't think about a whole lot unless they're standing in the rain waiting for a ride.

[Maya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some delightful vignettes about Albuquerque; some not so delightful poetry. Uneven, but interesting, especially for a local reader.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was pretty interesting, but the poetry was hit and miss.