CANCELED | UNC Press Presents Making the Latino South: Cecilia Márquez in conversation with Patricia Serrano

Image shows a photo of Cecilia Márquez and the front cover of her book, MAKING THE LATINO SOUTH. Also pictured is conversation partner Patricia Serrano

This event has been canceled due to illness. We will be rescheduling for 2024. Please stay tuned!


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In the 1940s South, it seemed that non-Black Latino people were on the road to whiteness. In fact, in many places throughout the region governed by Jim Crow, they were able to attend white schools, live in white neighborhoods, and marry white southerners. However, by the early 2000s, Latino people in the South were routinely cast as "illegal aliens" and targeted by some of the harshest anti-immigrant legislation in the country. This book helps explain how race evolved so dramatically for this population over the course of the second half of the twentieth century.

Cecilia Márquez guides readers through time and place from Washington, DC, to the deep South, tracing how non-Black Latino people moved through the region’s evolving racial landscape. In considering Latino presence in the South’s schools, its workplaces, its tourist destinations, and more, Márquez tells a challenging story of race-making that defies easy narratives of progressive change and promises to reshape the broader American histories of Jim Crow, the civil rights movement, immigration, work, and culture.

Cecilia Márquez is the Hunt Family Assistant Professor in History at Duke University and previously taught Latino/a Studies at New York University. Her research focuses on the history of Latinxs in the US South from 1940-Present. Dr. Márquez writes and teaches about the formation of Latinx identity, Latinx social movements, and the importance of region in shaping Latinx identity. Her work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Patricia Serrano is an Argentine journalist, writer, audio producer, and podcaster based in Asheville, NC. Her work focuses on the Latine community in North Carolina and the complex underlying stories and relationships connecting us throughout the Americas. Publications include NPR's Radio Ambulante, Blue Ridge Public Radio, Univision, and Enlace Latino NC, where she is the host, writer, and producer of the Enlace Latino Podcast. Patricia was a 2022 Cothinkk Grant recipient for accelerating positive changes in communities of color in Asheville and WNC. Currently, she is working on a new project, Sur Biblioteca, to bring books in Spanish and native languages to her native readers.

Event address: 
in person OR virtual attendance option
Books: 
Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation By Cecilia Márquez Cover Image
$27.95
ISBN: 9781469676050
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: University of North Carolina Press - September 12th, 2023

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SKU: x672389
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