The New Face of Small-Town America: Snapshots of Latino Life in Allentown, Pennsylvania by Edgar Sandoval

Abstract

Edgar Sandoval begins his latest book by relating the story of Nerivonne Sanchez, a fifteen-year-old Puerto Rican on the verge of celebrating her quinceañera. Part cotillion, part religious ceremony, the quinceañera is a centuries-old ritual that marks a girl's passage into womanhood in some Hispanic and Latino cultures. In times past, the quinceañera served as a public declaration that the celebrant was eligible for marriage, though that function has diminished greatly with changing cultural mores and attitudes toward age and gender. The story of Nerivonne and the larger Sanchez fam-ily sets the stage for what could have been a worthwhile examination of the adaptations and integrations of long-standing cultural and national tradi-tions in new contexts among Hispanic and Latino populations in the United States. What follows instead, however, is what this volume's subtitle sug-gests. There are no in-depth examinations of the social forces or structures that inform Latino populations' transnational movements, settlements, or recreations of cultural rituals in places like Allentown offered here. Rather, Sandoval provides only glimpses—snapshots indeed—into the existences of Latino populations living in this postindustrial town. While Sandoval offers the uninitiated a look into some of the social issues recent immigrants and long-term residents confront on a regular basis, scholars and students of Hispanic and Latino populations looking to deepen their research and studies will likely be left wanting.