What Is Latinx?

Part social history, part political theory, part philosophical reflection, and part memoir, Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture hopes to turn the notion of American identity on its head. Starting with the origins of racism in the Spanish Conquest and the formation of a mixed-race “mestizaje” hierarchy in Latin America, Latinx describes how migration to the U.S. and encountering its black-white racial binary can create new ideas about race. Latinx avoids promoting mixed-race identity as a panacea to racism while fleshing out the implications of Latinx racial identity in language, politics, and media, offering the possibility of change by embracing racial difference and raising class consciousness.

“Latinx is an erudite, comprehensive, politically astute, often poetic, and racially deep analysis of the second largest racialized group in the US.  Morales covers Latinx history from the conquest until Trump’s victory and provides a cogent vision for what things the group needs to consider to advance its standing in the mean streets of America. Every progressive needs to read this book.” Eduardo Bonilla Silva, author of Racism Without Racists

Scholar/journalist Ed Morales has written an evocative work of critique that weaves together memoir, history, and critical race theory in ways that deepen our understanding of the evolving nature of Latinx identity and politics. Hemispheric in approach and capacious in scope, Latinx is an eloquent meditation on the political and cultural possibilities of a population that is both growing and heterogeneous. Cristina Beltrán, author of The Trouble With Unity

Despite their long history in the United Stats, Latinxs have never been more misunderstood than today.  Morales offers a necessary history lesson and a provoking argument about the key role Latinxs could potentially play in fostering braoder and intersectional politics around gender, sexuality, nationality and race. A hopeful intervention, just when we need it most. Arlene Dávila, author of Culture Works and Latinos Inc.

This is a book of immense national importance to Latinos and to the rest of America, too. Here, Ed Morales explores the complex cultural ethnicity that is Latinidad, illuminating another practice of being American and another future for the Americas. Victor Hernández Cruz, author of Beneath the Spanish & Tropicalization

Julián Castro’s New York Times Review of Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture:

In “Latinx: The New Force in American Politics and Culture,” Ed Morales fills in that blank as well as the long, painful, complex and intersectional struggle for identity that has shaped America’s Latino community.  Read the review here.