The Changs Next Door To The Dazes Remapping Race In Suburban California Paperback Wendy Cheng by Wendy Cheng 9780816679829, 0816679827 instant download after payment.

The Changs Next Door to the Díazes reveals how a distinct culture is being fashioned in, & simultaneously reshaping, an environment of strip malls, multifamily housing, & faux Mediterranean tract homes. Informed by her interviews as well as extensive analysis of three episodic case studies, Cheng argues that people’s daily experiences—in neighborhoods, schools, civic organizations, & public space—deeply influence their racial consciousness. In the San Gabriel Valley, racial ideologies are being reformulated by these encounters. Cheng views everyday landscapes as crucial terrains through which racial hierarchies are learned, instantiated, & transformed. She terms the process “regional racial formation,” through which locally accepted racial orders & hierarchies complicate & often challenge prevailing notions of race.
There is a place-specific state of mind here, Cheng finds. Understanding the processes of racial formation in the San Gabriel Valley in the contemporary moment is important in itself but also has larger value as a model for considering the spatial dimensions of racial formation & the significant demographic shifts taking place across the national landscape.