SUNY Old Westbury’s American Studies Associate Professor Llana Barber has received the 2018 Kenneth Jackson Award. She was awarded Best Book in North American Urban History for Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000.
“I spent over a decade researching and writing this book so of course this recognition is thrilling for me on a personal level,” said Professor Barber. “This award recognizes the historical significance of the city of Lawrence, and of the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans who struggled to transform the city.” She was presented with the award at the Urban History Association Biennial Conference in Columbia, South Carolina.
She originally learned she had won in an email back in August. “I read the email while I was in Puerto Rico on the last day of a two-week service learning trip I had led for SUNY students,” she said. “Getting this news while I was in Puerto Rico made me particularly hopeful that the award would affirm the importance of Puerto Rican and Latino history in the United States.”
Latino City: Immigration and Urban Crisis in Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1945-2000 shows Lawrence as the first Latino city in New England. The book proceeds to explain how in the aftermath of World War II, Lawrence faced many economic struggles due to deindustrialization and suburbanization.
According to a summary on Amazon, “Barber interweaves the histories of urban crisis in U.S. cities and imperial migration from Latin America. Pushed to migrate by political and economic circumstances shaped by the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America, poor and working-class Latinos then had to reckon with the segregation, joblessness, disinvestment, and profound stigma that plagued U.S. cities during the crisis era, particularly in the Rust Belt. For many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, there was no ‘American Dream’ awaiting them in Lawrence; instead, Latinos struggled to build lives for themselves in the ruins of industrial America.
“Lawrence has long faced stigma, prejudice, and dismissal, so I truly hope that this award will help bring Lawrence and its residents some of the recognition and respect that they deserve,” Professor Barber said.
This isn’t the first time the book has earned an award. Earlier this summer, Professor Barber won the 2018 Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize from the New England American Studies Association. The Rudnick Prize is awarded to the best scholarly books in American Studies written about New England or by a New England scholar. Latino City shared the 2018 award with Hidetaka Hirota’s Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy.
As an educator, she spreads her knowledge to others. She said: “I write and teach with faith that understanding systems of privilege and oppression will help us dismantle them. I want to share energizing stories of activism, stories that show the heroism in people’s everyday struggles against injustice. The true achievement would be a just and sustainable world.”
Professor Barber is hopeful about the future. “I certainly hope that this award will help draw a wider audience for both Latino City and for my future projects. Other than that, I simply hope to have the great fortune to continue doing the work that I’m already doing.”
Watch Llana Barber discuss her teaching and research interests in this”Old Westbury Highlights” video from MIC: the Media Innovation Center
