The University of Arizona Press
When: Sunday, September 17, 4 p.m., CDT
Where: Bookwoman, 306 Pearl Parkway, Austin, TX
Chaitali Sen will interview Mehnaaz Momen about her new book, Listening to Laredo, A Border City in a Globalized Age. Why does the George Washington Birthday celebration last six weeks in Laredo? The author will answer this question, and talk about the seventy-five people whose stories fill her book. The event is free and open to the public. Signed copies of her book will be available for purchase. Mehnaaz Momen is an associate professor in the Department of Social Sciences at Texas A&M International University. Her research interests include citizenship, immigration policy, urban theory, public space, political satire, and marginality.
About the book:
Bringing together issues of growth, globalization, and identity, Mehnaaz Momen traces Laredo’s trajectory through the voices of its people. In contrast to the many studies of border cities defined by the outside—and seldom by the people who live at the border—this volume collects oral histories from seventy-five in-depth interviews that collectively illuminate the evolution of the city’s cultural and economic infrastructure, its interdependence with its sister city across the national boundary, and, above all, the strength of its community as it adapts to and even challenges the national narrative regarding the border. The resonant and lively voices of Laredo’s people convey proud ownership of an archetypal border city that has time and again resurrected itself.
