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Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of American Democracy (American Crossroads)
The radical history of a dynamic, multiracial American neighborhood.
“When I think of the future of the United States, and the history that matters in this country, I often think of Boyle Heights.”—George J. Sánchez
The vision for America’s cross-cultural future lies beyond the multicultural myth of the "great melting pot." That idea of diversity often imagined ethnically distinct urban districts—the Little Italys, Koreatowns, and Jewish quarters of American cities—built up over generations and occupying spaces that excluded one another. But the neighborhood of Boyle Heights shows us something altogether a dynamic, multiracial community that has forged solidarity through a history of social and political upheaval.
Boyle Heights is an in-depth history of the Los Angeles neighborhood, showcasing the potent experiences of its residents, from early contact between Spanish colonizers and native Californians to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the hunt for hidden Communists among the Jewish population, negotiating citizenship and belonging among Latino migrants and Mexican American residents, and beyond. Through each period and every struggle, the residents of Boyle Heights have maintained remarkable solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, acting as a unified polyglot community even as their tribulations have become more explicitly racial in nature. Boyle Heights is immigrant America embodied, and it can serve as the true beacon on a hill toward which the country can strive in a time when racial solidarity and civic resistance have never been in greater need.
“When I think of the future of the United States, and the history that matters in this country, I often think of Boyle Heights.”—George J. Sánchez
The vision for America’s cross-cultural future lies beyond the multicultural myth of the "great melting pot." That idea of diversity often imagined ethnically distinct urban districts—the Little Italys, Koreatowns, and Jewish quarters of American cities—built up over generations and occupying spaces that excluded one another. But the neighborhood of Boyle Heights shows us something altogether a dynamic, multiracial community that has forged solidarity through a history of social and political upheaval.
Boyle Heights is an in-depth history of the Los Angeles neighborhood, showcasing the potent experiences of its residents, from early contact between Spanish colonizers and native Californians to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the hunt for hidden Communists among the Jewish population, negotiating citizenship and belonging among Latino migrants and Mexican American residents, and beyond. Through each period and every struggle, the residents of Boyle Heights have maintained remarkable solidarity across racial and ethnic lines, acting as a unified polyglot community even as their tribulations have become more explicitly racial in nature. Boyle Heights is immigrant America embodied, and it can serve as the true beacon on a hill toward which the country can strive in a time when racial solidarity and civic resistance have never been in greater need.
- GenresHistoryAmerican History
389 pages, Hardcover
Published May 25, 2021
16 people are currently reading
242 people want to read
About the author
George J. Sanchez
8 books4 followersGeorge J. Sanchez is Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity, and History at the University of Southern California. His academic work focuses on both historical and contemporary topics of race, gender, ethnicity, labor, and immigration, and he is currently working on a historical study of the ethnic interaction of Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans, African Americans, and Jews in the Boyle Heights area of East Los Angeles, California in the twentieth century. He is Past President of the American Studies Association in 2001-02, and is one of the co-editors of the book series, “American Crossroads: New Works in Ethnic Studies,” from the University of California Press. He currently serves as Director of the Center for Diversity and Democracy at USC, which focuses on issues of racial/ethnic diversity in higher education and issues of civic engagement. In 2010, he received the Outstanding Latino/a Faculty in Higher Education (Research Institutions) Award from the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, Inc. and in 2011, he received the first ever Equity Award for individuals that have achieved excellence in recruiting and retaining underrepresented racial and ethnic groups into the historical profession from the American Historical Association. He received his Ph.D. in History in 1989 from Stanford University.
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August 8, 2021
In the annals of Chicanx history, only a few historians stand heads and shoulders above the rest. One of those is George J. Sanchez whose recent publication, Boyle Heights: How a Los Angeles Neighborhood Became the Future of Democracy leaves off where his award-winning Becoming Mexican American made its mark roughly three decades ago. That book made a critical impact on me: I came through the ranks of graduate school in Chicanx history under the tutelage of award-winning Chicana historian and former OAH president Vicki Ruiz, a counterpart to the generation of Chicanx historians also occupied by Sanchez. Years ago, I devoured Becoming Mexican American as a beacon for other scholarship on the history of twentieth century Mexican Americans in Los Angeles. That book illuminated a distinctive history of first- and then second-generation Mexicans/Mexican Americans on the Eastside of Los Angeles. The pivotal second-generation anchored themselves to Boyle Heights and also adjusted to life in the U.S. I still frequently recommend this book to readers with its vibrant chapters on repatriation, family life, music, and the rise of the second generation.
But, in his recent book, Sanchez is quick to point out that Becoming Mexican American represented only one tile in the dazzling mosaic of 20th century Boyle Heights. His current project is a study in contrasts. Boyle which has been comprised of myriad ethnic and racial groups, including Mexican/Mexican Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans. The author masterfully unravels a paramount historical question examining “how this community came to be a thriving community over time and how the legacy of this progressive multiracialism continues to be a powerful influence over residents when the neighborhood became overwhelmingly Latino in the last third of the 20th century.”(4) Sanchez builds his argument using a welter of key sources including oral histories, governmental reports, census reports, archival holdings, historic newspapers, and other ephemera.
Curiously, Boyle Heights was to be designated as a white-only enclave. City leaders hoped it would help attract white boosters from the East coast as “the first suburb of refined whiteness.” (29) Of course, the community evolved much differently stemming from its geographic location and municipal ordinances: Boyle Heights was remote-- located east of the Los Angeles River. It would be several decades before transportation arteries and famously the Sixth Street Bridge (and other bridges) connected the community to downtown. Racial covenants--city ordinances preventing BIPOC from settling in a neighborhood--shaped most Los Angeles throughout the first half of the 20th century. But, Boyle Heights lacked such ordinances, leading it to become a veritable multiethnic neighborhood.
Most of the residents of Boyle Heights, including Jewish, Mexicans, and Molokans, had been steeped in radical politics—Mexicans influenced by the anti-Diaz Partido Liberal Mexicano and the activism of the Flores Magon brothers and Jewish immigrants influenced by radical Zionism and the Russian Revolution. Later, these groups were joined by Japanese Americans and African Americans, both groups blocked from settling in other racially segregated Los Angeles neighborhoods. And, this is just the point: the history of Boyle Heights shows us migrants who “share radical traditions from their homelands, even while the rise of nationalist sentiments and segregated enclaves in the period led them to strengthen their own ethnic sense of self.” (66)
With the advent of the Great Depression--and a decade later, World War II-- residents of Boyle Heights endured acute racism. Under strapped financial circumstances, many Mexican laborers lost their jobs, requiring public assistance. Repatriation, a plan jointly sponsored by the U.S. and Mexican governments, became a convenient way to expunge unwanted racial-ethnic groups from Los Angeles. Massive deportations occurred, resulting in more than 13,000 L.A. Mexicans (and many Mexican-Americans) being sent back to Mexico by 1934. Plans for a second Repatriation Program were well afoot by 1941; however, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a new racial scapegoat emerged in Japanese Americans. Those histories of exploitation were not mutually exclusive as Sanchez cogently argues, racialized narratives can be interlocking as “patterns of dehumanization against one racialized group can be transferred into policy against another. . . “(68) Thus, by February 1942, Executive Order 9066 formalized the evacuation of Japanese/Japanese Americans as “enemy aliens.” Summoned by evacuation orders, Japanese Americans quickly packed up and were sent to Santa Anita Racetrack before being sent to such internment camps as Manzanar. But, neighborhood residents rallied together to support internees, protecting their residential properties and personal belongings until they returned.
Another problem that emerged was the attempt to dislocate Mexicans from Boyle Heights to make way for freeways and public housing. L.A. stakeholders reasoned that to improve the neighborhood poor people needed to be expelled. Public housing projects emerged in the 1940s purportedly epitomizing “New Deal reform” politics. In reality, these same programs were restricted to “American born” and/or military families, denying Mexicans and others from the benefits of the programs. Dislocation would be a common theme for populations like Mexican immigrants and others deemed “disposable people.”
Following World War II, the exodus of Jewish Americans began in earnest. They established communities in Westside L.A. and the San Fernando Valley for the first time. Factors such as federal entitlement programs like the G.I. Bill and F.H.A. loans favored Jewish residents of Boyle Heights. For example, G.I. Bill alone created higher educational opportunities previously unrecognized. Two decades later, deindustrialization changed the composition of Boyle Heights. Small-scale sweatshops and nonunionized manufacturing drew a new group of workers: low-wage, often undocumented workers skeptical of unionized labor. It was a sweat shop owners dream. Meanwhile, Mexican Americans moved out of Boyle Heights into eastern Los Angeles suburbs while the availability of public housing for undocumented newcomers and the transformation of multilingual Boyle Heights into a Spanish-speaking enclave welcomed the new Latinx immigrants.
In the 21st century, Boyle Heights remains a vibrant, Spanish-speaking community, but one that faces problems characteristic of many L.A. neighborhoods. Will gentrification translate into the trendy millennial havens such as that of Echo Park? Or will Boyle Heights remain a welcoming home to its undocumented Latinx residents? Sanchez does not attempt to foretell the future of Boyle Heights but rather to set the record straight about the past: “only by confronting multiple histories and contemporary conditions . . . may the true power of the multiracial past of Los Angeles be recognized for its importance and its continued impact on the lives of us all.” (264)
But, in his recent book, Sanchez is quick to point out that Becoming Mexican American represented only one tile in the dazzling mosaic of 20th century Boyle Heights. His current project is a study in contrasts. Boyle which has been comprised of myriad ethnic and racial groups, including Mexican/Mexican Americans, African Americans, Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans. The author masterfully unravels a paramount historical question examining “how this community came to be a thriving community over time and how the legacy of this progressive multiracialism continues to be a powerful influence over residents when the neighborhood became overwhelmingly Latino in the last third of the 20th century.”(4) Sanchez builds his argument using a welter of key sources including oral histories, governmental reports, census reports, archival holdings, historic newspapers, and other ephemera.
Curiously, Boyle Heights was to be designated as a white-only enclave. City leaders hoped it would help attract white boosters from the East coast as “the first suburb of refined whiteness.” (29) Of course, the community evolved much differently stemming from its geographic location and municipal ordinances: Boyle Heights was remote-- located east of the Los Angeles River. It would be several decades before transportation arteries and famously the Sixth Street Bridge (and other bridges) connected the community to downtown. Racial covenants--city ordinances preventing BIPOC from settling in a neighborhood--shaped most Los Angeles throughout the first half of the 20th century. But, Boyle Heights lacked such ordinances, leading it to become a veritable multiethnic neighborhood.
Most of the residents of Boyle Heights, including Jewish, Mexicans, and Molokans, had been steeped in radical politics—Mexicans influenced by the anti-Diaz Partido Liberal Mexicano and the activism of the Flores Magon brothers and Jewish immigrants influenced by radical Zionism and the Russian Revolution. Later, these groups were joined by Japanese Americans and African Americans, both groups blocked from settling in other racially segregated Los Angeles neighborhoods. And, this is just the point: the history of Boyle Heights shows us migrants who “share radical traditions from their homelands, even while the rise of nationalist sentiments and segregated enclaves in the period led them to strengthen their own ethnic sense of self.” (66)
With the advent of the Great Depression--and a decade later, World War II-- residents of Boyle Heights endured acute racism. Under strapped financial circumstances, many Mexican laborers lost their jobs, requiring public assistance. Repatriation, a plan jointly sponsored by the U.S. and Mexican governments, became a convenient way to expunge unwanted racial-ethnic groups from Los Angeles. Massive deportations occurred, resulting in more than 13,000 L.A. Mexicans (and many Mexican-Americans) being sent back to Mexico by 1934. Plans for a second Repatriation Program were well afoot by 1941; however, with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a new racial scapegoat emerged in Japanese Americans. Those histories of exploitation were not mutually exclusive as Sanchez cogently argues, racialized narratives can be interlocking as “patterns of dehumanization against one racialized group can be transferred into policy against another. . . “(68) Thus, by February 1942, Executive Order 9066 formalized the evacuation of Japanese/Japanese Americans as “enemy aliens.” Summoned by evacuation orders, Japanese Americans quickly packed up and were sent to Santa Anita Racetrack before being sent to such internment camps as Manzanar. But, neighborhood residents rallied together to support internees, protecting their residential properties and personal belongings until they returned.
Another problem that emerged was the attempt to dislocate Mexicans from Boyle Heights to make way for freeways and public housing. L.A. stakeholders reasoned that to improve the neighborhood poor people needed to be expelled. Public housing projects emerged in the 1940s purportedly epitomizing “New Deal reform” politics. In reality, these same programs were restricted to “American born” and/or military families, denying Mexicans and others from the benefits of the programs. Dislocation would be a common theme for populations like Mexican immigrants and others deemed “disposable people.”
Following World War II, the exodus of Jewish Americans began in earnest. They established communities in Westside L.A. and the San Fernando Valley for the first time. Factors such as federal entitlement programs like the G.I. Bill and F.H.A. loans favored Jewish residents of Boyle Heights. For example, G.I. Bill alone created higher educational opportunities previously unrecognized. Two decades later, deindustrialization changed the composition of Boyle Heights. Small-scale sweatshops and nonunionized manufacturing drew a new group of workers: low-wage, often undocumented workers skeptical of unionized labor. It was a sweat shop owners dream. Meanwhile, Mexican Americans moved out of Boyle Heights into eastern Los Angeles suburbs while the availability of public housing for undocumented newcomers and the transformation of multilingual Boyle Heights into a Spanish-speaking enclave welcomed the new Latinx immigrants.
In the 21st century, Boyle Heights remains a vibrant, Spanish-speaking community, but one that faces problems characteristic of many L.A. neighborhoods. Will gentrification translate into the trendy millennial havens such as that of Echo Park? Or will Boyle Heights remain a welcoming home to its undocumented Latinx residents? Sanchez does not attempt to foretell the future of Boyle Heights but rather to set the record straight about the past: “only by confronting multiple histories and contemporary conditions . . . may the true power of the multiracial past of Los Angeles be recognized for its importance and its continued impact on the lives of us all.” (264)
January 23, 2022
I didn't get what I wanted from Boyle Heights, but I got something that I need.
I wanted a street-by-street, neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of Boyle Heights through the decades. I wanted to get a feel for the geography and commercial districts. I wanted to know the businesses along First Street and Brooklyn in the 1920s, and when they disappeared. I wanted to know the exact borders and distance between Boyle Heights, Belvedere, Lincoln Heights, Maravilla, and the black Evergreen area. I wanted to know about the black community around Evergreen Cemetery.
I didn't exactly get much that (I had to look it up on Google maps), but what I did get was riveting stories. The author documents selected events, movements, and demographies through the decades, from the European conquest in the 18th century to the present day. You get a feel for how the housing development was formed in the 1880s under Workman and his father-in-law Boyle, and the hopes they had for it. Imagine: In the 1890s, Boyle Heights was a suburb! Way across the river! You had to cross over one of the bridges! By the 1920s, you had to jump on a streetcar. What hopes they had for the Heights!
Eventually, those hopes were dashed as East Los Angeles became one of Los Angeles' slums. Sanchez never talks about ELA in those terms, however, preferring to see it as a solid polyglot neighborhood of new immigrants--European Jews fleeing persecution, Mexicans fleeing the revolution, Molokov Russians fleeing their own Christian persecution, plus Italians, Southern blacks, and the like.
In this way, Sanchez sees Boyle Heights as "the future of American democracy." It started out, he claims, as a melting pot in which different races and ethnicities could live in harmony, creating a model for the rest of the city, which in the early 20th century was an exceedingly white and intolerant place. I take issue here, because I've seen how minorities of that era stereotyped other races with which they lived, creating neighborhood divisions rather than connections. Mexicans often didn't associate with Jews. Jews, in turn, moved out of the barrio as soon as they could, and into Jewish enclaves such as the Westside, the Fairfax District, and Encino. Blacks lived around the Evergreen Cemetery, and not much beyond. As the book notes, "Everybody lived in their own little ghettos" (a quote from a woman named Claire Stein). In other words, minorities have had to learn about racial harmony almost as much as whites.
I also take issue with the author's take in East Los Angeles as a permanent home. It is not a place where many people stay for generations. It is a place where housing is cheap and has always been cheap, and where poor, uneducated refugees live because they cannot afford anywhere else. Take, for example, Utah Street in the Flats in the early 20th century. It's where my grandfather lived in 1925, and it was squalid, featuring makeshift homes with walls of corrugated tin and open sewers. My grandfather Jesus lived in a boardinghouse one street away from the Los Angeles River, which at that time was a fetid waste-disposal site, populated by dead animals, prostitutes, and human waste, and one street away from a tamale factory and other factories, a mixture of residential and industrial that generally didn't happen in other parts of the city. To quote from the ESO (a planning organization established by the LA Regional Planning Commission), "Life cannot be normal in a district so much given over to industry, where there must of necessity be noise, grime, confusion, unpleasant odors, houses insanitary [sic] and dilapidated," a quote that the book brings to our attention (page 51). I disagree with some of Sanchez's conclusions about Boyle Heights because my family's experience is different. My mother longed to get away from ELA, and when she did at age 11 in 1941, life got so much easier.
However, the author taught me so much about the area that I consider this book well worth the read. Sanchez details the rise of Californio Ed Roybal in Los Angeles politics in 1949, which marked the beginning of Mexican-American representation and improvement in their daily lives. This taught me a lot. This date was a turning point in improving the living conditions of East Los Angeles residents, although it is both amusing and sad that Roybal's efforts were branded communistic, as is the habit of right-wing forces when they encounter politicians who are working for the common good rather than the interests of the oligarchs. Sanchez tells us, additionally, that in 1933, Police Chief James Davis presaged that sentiment when he said that "the greatest threat to democracy emanated from the Jewish-dominated Boyle Heights area"--by which he meant unions working to raise wages for poor minorities.
I also didn't realize that so many freeways had cut up Boyle Heights and East L.A., evicting homeowners, paying below-market compensation rates, and breaking up neighborhoods. I mean, I've driven those freeways hundreds of times--the 5, the 10, the 101, the 60--but didn't realize that those four freeways slice up that small region, eventually occupying 15% of its territory. I was torn on this issue, too, because East Los Angeles seems like a waystation rather than a home, a place for immigrants to stay for a time while finding a way to assimilate into American society. But then, utter the term "assimilation" and you will have activists screaming at you for hating your race. So forget that I said that. To take the other point of view, where will immigrants assimilate to if they can't get good-paying jobs? Only to other slums in South-Central, Baldwin Park, Pacoima, or the like. In the end, the culprit are the large industries that insist on keeping wages so low that they have to live in squalor.
I will be coming back to this book over the next few years. It is quite a story, and it's evident that Sanchez cherishes his subject matter. In writing this review, I discovered great subtleties and comprehensiveness in Sanchez's coverage of the subject. Boyle Heights is a place where races lived together in peace--not always, but often. It is a place that is always changing even more than other neighborhoods. It is a neighborhood that you really should understand.
I wanted a street-by-street, neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of Boyle Heights through the decades. I wanted to get a feel for the geography and commercial districts. I wanted to know the businesses along First Street and Brooklyn in the 1920s, and when they disappeared. I wanted to know the exact borders and distance between Boyle Heights, Belvedere, Lincoln Heights, Maravilla, and the black Evergreen area. I wanted to know about the black community around Evergreen Cemetery.
I didn't exactly get much that (I had to look it up on Google maps), but what I did get was riveting stories. The author documents selected events, movements, and demographies through the decades, from the European conquest in the 18th century to the present day. You get a feel for how the housing development was formed in the 1880s under Workman and his father-in-law Boyle, and the hopes they had for it. Imagine: In the 1890s, Boyle Heights was a suburb! Way across the river! You had to cross over one of the bridges! By the 1920s, you had to jump on a streetcar. What hopes they had for the Heights!
Eventually, those hopes were dashed as East Los Angeles became one of Los Angeles' slums. Sanchez never talks about ELA in those terms, however, preferring to see it as a solid polyglot neighborhood of new immigrants--European Jews fleeing persecution, Mexicans fleeing the revolution, Molokov Russians fleeing their own Christian persecution, plus Italians, Southern blacks, and the like.
In this way, Sanchez sees Boyle Heights as "the future of American democracy." It started out, he claims, as a melting pot in which different races and ethnicities could live in harmony, creating a model for the rest of the city, which in the early 20th century was an exceedingly white and intolerant place. I take issue here, because I've seen how minorities of that era stereotyped other races with which they lived, creating neighborhood divisions rather than connections. Mexicans often didn't associate with Jews. Jews, in turn, moved out of the barrio as soon as they could, and into Jewish enclaves such as the Westside, the Fairfax District, and Encino. Blacks lived around the Evergreen Cemetery, and not much beyond. As the book notes, "Everybody lived in their own little ghettos" (a quote from a woman named Claire Stein). In other words, minorities have had to learn about racial harmony almost as much as whites.
I also take issue with the author's take in East Los Angeles as a permanent home. It is not a place where many people stay for generations. It is a place where housing is cheap and has always been cheap, and where poor, uneducated refugees live because they cannot afford anywhere else. Take, for example, Utah Street in the Flats in the early 20th century. It's where my grandfather lived in 1925, and it was squalid, featuring makeshift homes with walls of corrugated tin and open sewers. My grandfather Jesus lived in a boardinghouse one street away from the Los Angeles River, which at that time was a fetid waste-disposal site, populated by dead animals, prostitutes, and human waste, and one street away from a tamale factory and other factories, a mixture of residential and industrial that generally didn't happen in other parts of the city. To quote from the ESO (a planning organization established by the LA Regional Planning Commission), "Life cannot be normal in a district so much given over to industry, where there must of necessity be noise, grime, confusion, unpleasant odors, houses insanitary [sic] and dilapidated," a quote that the book brings to our attention (page 51). I disagree with some of Sanchez's conclusions about Boyle Heights because my family's experience is different. My mother longed to get away from ELA, and when she did at age 11 in 1941, life got so much easier.
However, the author taught me so much about the area that I consider this book well worth the read. Sanchez details the rise of Californio Ed Roybal in Los Angeles politics in 1949, which marked the beginning of Mexican-American representation and improvement in their daily lives. This taught me a lot. This date was a turning point in improving the living conditions of East Los Angeles residents, although it is both amusing and sad that Roybal's efforts were branded communistic, as is the habit of right-wing forces when they encounter politicians who are working for the common good rather than the interests of the oligarchs. Sanchez tells us, additionally, that in 1933, Police Chief James Davis presaged that sentiment when he said that "the greatest threat to democracy emanated from the Jewish-dominated Boyle Heights area"--by which he meant unions working to raise wages for poor minorities.
I also didn't realize that so many freeways had cut up Boyle Heights and East L.A., evicting homeowners, paying below-market compensation rates, and breaking up neighborhoods. I mean, I've driven those freeways hundreds of times--the 5, the 10, the 101, the 60--but didn't realize that those four freeways slice up that small region, eventually occupying 15% of its territory. I was torn on this issue, too, because East Los Angeles seems like a waystation rather than a home, a place for immigrants to stay for a time while finding a way to assimilate into American society. But then, utter the term "assimilation" and you will have activists screaming at you for hating your race. So forget that I said that. To take the other point of view, where will immigrants assimilate to if they can't get good-paying jobs? Only to other slums in South-Central, Baldwin Park, Pacoima, or the like. In the end, the culprit are the large industries that insist on keeping wages so low that they have to live in squalor.
I will be coming back to this book over the next few years. It is quite a story, and it's evident that Sanchez cherishes his subject matter. In writing this review, I discovered great subtleties and comprehensiveness in Sanchez's coverage of the subject. Boyle Heights is a place where races lived together in peace--not always, but often. It is a place that is always changing even more than other neighborhoods. It is a neighborhood that you really should understand.
November 3, 2023
A powerful book on many levels, and should be a must read for a lot of people. If you are into urban planning, public policy- a must read. If you are into grass roots social activism - must read. If you live in or around LA or are from that area- must read. And then if you as just looking for a thought provoking, well researched and written book about very important aspects of our lives (how gov. Can create unjust situations, the power of organizing locally, how complicate life is when living in a community - gentrification vs gentefication (not a typo, p. 258)… - a must read.
There are so many conversations I want to have after reading this book, as it is so thought provoking.
I hope you find as much value as I did.
There are so many conversations I want to have after reading this book, as it is so thought provoking.
I hope you find as much value as I did.
October 15, 2021
Brilliant history of this area of Los Angeles, of special interest since I grew up there for my first 5 years. Sanchez, a phenomenal historian, traces the history of an area which, in the early 20th century, became a truly multi-racial, ethnic and religious neighborhood, about 1/3 Mexican, 1/3 Jewish, and somewhat less Japanese. Sanchez traces the trends that accounted for this and how things changed after World War II, when the Jewish families (mine included) began to move out to the San Fernando Valley or the Westside. His final chapters, on the challenges of gentrification and "gentification," are particularly important.
December 23, 2021
for school - NELA history course. super interesting connecting how immigration to NELA & the need for community becomes timeless when you consider what types of people move to LA today
June 29, 2022
An incredible book that was very interesting hand informative that shows how one area can hold an enormous history. Highly recommend. Will definitely read more from this series
September 5, 2024
Good read for being a monograph
December 15, 2024
A wonderful love letter to a neighborhood. Had to read this for class, but I am much better for the experience. What more could I ask for?
January 30, 2025
A similar book to George J. Sanchez' book is "South Central Dreams: Finding Home and Building Community in South L.A." written by two eminent scholars Manuel Pastor and Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. In "South Central Dreams," using hundreds and hundreds of surveys, they describe an historically Black neighborhood transforming into a predominantly Latino town--looking at the constantly changing-relationships between two racial groups over the last five decades in South Los Angeles.
George J. Sanchez and Manuel Pastor (one of the authors of "South Central Dreams") both are professors at USC. Too bad someone didn't intervene and combine both books into one--reorganizing both ideas into one compelling story about Los Angeles.
"Boyle Heights" is a much more user-friendly read about just one neighborhood located just east of the Los Angeles river. Using Sanchez' in-depth research and his own experiences growing up there, his neighborhood included the Jewish, the Japanese, the Anglo, and the 1940s Mexican Braceros families--al who were once a part of a thriving community with a keen interest in their city.
But, after two freeways separated Boyle Heights into segments, the connectedness literally halved and continued to diminish each decade thereafter. At the same time, Los Angeles began to move polluting industries into Boyle Heights and those that could moved out to the suburbs. As the city began to need repairs, none were provided. Much of Boyle Heights in the 1990s became homes for the Central American immigrants. Currently an under-current gentrification movement is taking place, and it is not necessarily welcome.
Well written.
George J. Sanchez and Manuel Pastor (one of the authors of "South Central Dreams") both are professors at USC. Too bad someone didn't intervene and combine both books into one--reorganizing both ideas into one compelling story about Los Angeles.
"Boyle Heights" is a much more user-friendly read about just one neighborhood located just east of the Los Angeles river. Using Sanchez' in-depth research and his own experiences growing up there, his neighborhood included the Jewish, the Japanese, the Anglo, and the 1940s Mexican Braceros families--al who were once a part of a thriving community with a keen interest in their city.
But, after two freeways separated Boyle Heights into segments, the connectedness literally halved and continued to diminish each decade thereafter. At the same time, Los Angeles began to move polluting industries into Boyle Heights and those that could moved out to the suburbs. As the city began to need repairs, none were provided. Much of Boyle Heights in the 1990s became homes for the Central American immigrants. Currently an under-current gentrification movement is taking place, and it is not necessarily welcome.
Well written.
July 6, 2023
Boyle Heights is familiar to me as a native Californian raised in Long Beach and who spent college years in Los Angeles. My husband's Jewish grandparents owned a grocery store in it from the early 20's on, and my husband himself was bar mitzvah at the Breed Street shul. I thought I knew all about Boyle Heights. Author George J. Sanchez does, but I sure don't.
I did not pick a good time to read the book -- in the middle of a residential relocation -- so I will wait for a better time to tackle something that I know I need to take more slowly than this first time. I can't wait!
I did not pick a good time to read the book -- in the middle of a residential relocation -- so I will wait for a better time to tackle something that I know I need to take more slowly than this first time. I can't wait!
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews