The Mexico City Reader
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Book Overview
The Mexico City Reader is an anthology of ""cronicas"" - short texts that are a cross between literary essay and urban reportage - about life in Mexico City today. This is not the ""City of Palaces"" of yesteryear, but the vibrant, chaotic, anarchic city of the 1980s and 1990s - the city of garbage mafias, corrupt ex-presidents, and spectacular crime. Taken together in all their variety, these texts form a mosiac of life in Mexico City. Like the visitor wandering through the city streets, the reader should expect to be constantly surprised. Mexico City is one of Latin America's cultural capitals, and one of the most vibrant urban spaces in the world. Like the streets of the city, The Mexico City Reader is brimming with life, crowded with flaneurs, flirtatious students, Indian dancers, food vendors, fortune tellers, political activists, and peasant protesters. The writers include expert theorists - a panoply of writers from Carlos Monsivais and Jorge Ibaguengoitia to Fabrizio Mejia Madrid and Juieta Garcia Gonzalez - brought together precisely because they are experienced practitioners of the city.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:029919714X
ISBN13:9780299197148
Release Date:July 2004
Publisher:University of Wisconsin Press
Length:346 Pages
Weight:1.10 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.1" x 8.9"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Best narrative modern history of Mexico City
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 16 years ago
Awesome book. This books paints a picture of Mexico City like no other. It's a collection of 30-some essays and reportage. Some have a historical perspective (e.g., the Metro system just after it was built), while others are very recent. This isn't a guidebook, but it will give you a better understanding of the city's underpinnings than a stack of Lonely Planets ever will. Most of the authors are Mexicans; a lot of the essays are famous in Mexico, and appearing in English for the first time. There is a level of authenticity here that is not reached by competing books (e.g., David Lida's 'First Stop in the New World' -- which is more of an American journalist's perspective on things.) The writing is exciting, artistic, and well-chosen.
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