Collisions at the Crossroads How Place and Mobility Make Race

"Carpio's attention to people's everyday negotiations with the structures that govern mobility will be of interest to historians of colonial and postcolonial mobility, to cultural historians of bicycles, automobiles, and highways, and to historians of migration, space, and place."—Journal of Transport History

“One of the smartest books I’ve read in years. By focusing on ‘placeness’ and mobility, Genevieve Carpio creates a new paradigm for understanding both overt and subtle forms of racism.”—Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

“Adding to the vibrant scholarly literature on race and place, Genevieve Carpio has produced an invaluable study of mobility and immobility in the race-making practices of California’s Inland Empire. She has written Collisions at the Crossroads with great archival ingenuity and conceptual sophistication. She is also keenly attuned to the vivid details of lived experience and to the plainspoken humanity of the diverse people who are her subjects. A splendid accomplishment.”—Matthew Frye Jacobson, author of The Historian’s Eye and Barbarian Virtues

“Good books often make us realize that we can't believe no one has studied this before. Collisions at the Crossroads provides groundbreaking insights into how mobility allowed some groups to become insiders and how the lack of it forced other groups to become outsiders, occupying different places in the regional racial hierarchy. A strongly original and insightful work.”—Natalia Molina, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California, and author of How Race Is Made in America

“Through close attention to the entanglement of race and everyday mobility, Genevieve Carpio shines a brilliant light on a previously unexplored aspect of the contested geographies of Southern California specifically and the American West more generally. Empirically rich, theoretically rigorous, and engagingly written, Collisions at the Crossroads connects the diverse experiences of Japanese citrus workers, Dust Bowl migrants, Latinx drivers of lowriders, and Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Filipino migrants to provide a counter-history of the role of mobility in the American West. For those interested in mobility studies, critical race theory, or the spatial histories of Greater Los Angeles, Carpio has provided a pioneering landmark text.”—Tim Cresswell, author of Maxwell Street: Writing and Thinking Place