Chicanx Utopias moves like a musical score with break beats, pauses, and time changes, that is, a score that moves across genres of pop culture—TV, movies, theater, and frontera soundscapes. It is a cultural history of a radical imaginary that demonstrates that these dreams and imaginaries always contained the seeds of possible new worlds. Luis Alvarez brings Chicana/o/x studies in conversation with the vast, complicated, and often contradictory literatures on utopia—readers will buzz over this study and scholars will be inspired by this book’s transformative achievements.
~Alan Gomez, Arizona State University, author of The Revolutionary Imaginations of Greater Mexico: Chicana/o Radicalism, Solidarity Politics, and Latin American Social Movements
Chicanx Utopias sets a new standard of excellence for the study of the politics of culture and the culture of politics. Luis Alvarez has crafted a magnificent book that shows how films, music, poster art, and television programs became contested terrains attendant to the Chicano movement for dignity, self-definition, and self-determination. His erudition, imagination, and impressive ability to roam across different cultural forms enable Alvarez to show how social movements shake up social life. This book will transform in significant and lasting ways scholarship in social history, ethnic studies, and cultural studies.
~George Lipsitz, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of How Racism Takes Place
[Chicanx Utopias] opens new doors for understanding the complicated relationships that exist among television, film, music, art, people, politics, and social movements from the post-World War II years to the 2000s...This book is a valuable addition to the various conversations happening in Latinx/Chicanx studies, ethnic studies, cultural studies and many other disciplines.
~Southwestern Historical Quarterly
Alvarez’s focus on utopias is a fresh take on Chicanx cultural history...Alvarez’s expansive interdisciplinary scholarship—covering over five decades of Chicanx popular culture—makes Chicanx Utopias an important addition to the fields of Chicanx cultural studies, Chicanx history, and pop culture studies, and to the scholarship on utopias.
~Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies
