Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest ed. by Theresa Delgadillo (review)

Reviewed by: Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest ed. by Theresa Delgadillo Teresa Irene Gonzales Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest Edited by Theresa Delgadillo, Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, Geraldo L. Cadava, and Claire F. Fox (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2022. Pp. vii, 328. Clothbound, $125.00; paperbound, $28.00.) Building Sustainable Worlds provides a thought-provoking collection of the various ways that Latina/o/x populations engage in placemaking practices across the Midwest. Moving away from a social-scientific or built-environment lens, the authors in this edited volume adeptly reimagine placemaking practices by centering distinct forms of expressive cultures, from literature to performance, collective action, and leisure. Divided into three parts, the first examines how Latinas/os/xs both craft and reimagine their localities in time and space. The second, a series of narratives by Latina/o/x activists and practitioners, highlights how Latinas/os/xs have created spaces of fellowship and celebration. Finally, the third section discusses placemaking in developing fellowship and movement across racial and ethnic divides. What is evident throughout the volume is that solidarity building, playfulness, and creating what Polakit and Schomberg’s Diálogos: Placemaking in Latino Communities (2012) refers to as “homemaking” are central to Latina/o/x placemaking. Alongside an excavation of the long histories of Latinas/os/xs across the [End Page 297] Midwest, the expansive volume provides an analysis of cultural works and representations, such as zines, short stories, festivals, dance performances, drag shows, and podcasts. The geographic scope is impressive: while several of the chapters focus on Chicago, we are also introduced to practices and histories in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Hampton, Iowa; East Chicago, Indiana; across Ohio; and on college campuses in Illinois and Wisconsin. In its focus on the Midwest, Building Sustainable Worlds expands theories of placemaking and provides an important intervention into Latina/o/x Studies. A minor critique: the title is misleading. In an era of heightened awareness regarding our natural environments, the terms sustainable and sustainability evoke images of a world in environmental crisis. Some of the authors highlight the linkages between climate change and forced migration. However, for the most part, the volume focuses on building worlds that sustain Latina/o/x cultures. With this focus in mind, the collected essays echo arguments made by social scientists, such as Michael Rios, Paolo Boccagni, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, and Juan Herrera, to name a few. The authors in this volume, however, challenge us to expand ideas about the interlink-ages between culture and placemaking by considering cultural productions, ephemeral practices, and testimonios. Given the draw of labor in manufacturing, railways, and elsewhere, Latinas/os/xs have existed throughout the Midwest for well over a century. These populations, however, are often overlooked and erased within the popular imaginary, with Latinas/os/xs consistently considered as newcomers. Yet, as the authors in this volume highlight, Latinas/os/xs have a long and varied history within the region that has given birth to new ways of being and knowing. As the editors argue in the introduction, there is an “intimate connection between place and culture” (p. 1). It is through that connection that Latinas/os/xs have both created a collective sense of identity and, simultaneously, inscribed themselves and their cultures onto the local geographic and cultural landscapes. Given these considerations, there really is no Midwest without Latina/o/x placemaking practices. [End Page 298] Teresa Irene Gonzales Loyola University Chicago. Copyright © 2023 Trustees of Indiana University