Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915–1940 Michael Innis‐Jiménez. New York: New York University Press, 2013.

Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago, 1915-1940 Michael Innis-Jimenez. New York: New York University Press, 2013.In Steel Barrio, Michael Innis-Jimenez tells the story of interwar Mexican immigrants traveling to and transforming the industrial neighborhood of South Chicago. Innis-Jime'nez constructs his narrative around a core of oral histories and personal papers, describing the methods immigrants used to form new identities while maintaining their proud cultural heritage. While he recognizes the economic forces in play -grueling twelve-hour workdays followed by the Great Depression-the author focuses on Mexicano agency in overcoming them.1 Throughout his work, Innis-Jimenez, assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama, explores what is known as a "third space," a grey area where South Chicago residents balanced their lives between Mexico and the US, between being Mexican and American. Here, the author successfully argues, readers will find the origins of Chicago's modern immigration rights movement and insight into navigating life for those newly arrived to American soil.Early on, readers retrace the footsteps of immigrants fleeing Mexico in search of economic stability and personal safety, beginning around 1915. InnisJime'nez argues that the Mexican Revolution pushed citizens northward as it "disrupted an already fragile agricultural economy, creating widespread environmental devastation, malnutrition, lack of work, and inflation" (23). In the same vein, white business owners and politicians lured Mexicans northward by championing the US Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924 that stemmed the tide of immigrants escaping post-World War One Europe. Once across the border, arterial railroads transported workers inland and branch lines funneled many of them to the South Chicago neighborhood (an area much farther south of what is today referred to as Chicago's South Side). Finally, local racial conflicts convinced white steel mill owners to hire anyone but African Americans, and, thus, InnisJime'nez demonstrates, Mexican immigrants found work not because of any racial democracy but rather just the opposite.It is in the heart of Steel Barrio where InnisJime'nez examines the "physical and cultural sites where a distinctive shared identity is formed-the neighborhood and the community" (13). Spanish-language restaurant signs dotted South Chicago thoroughfares, and newspaper vendors peddled copies of Correo Mexicano and El Anunciador to passersby. Heeding the advice of philosopher Jose Vasconcelos, who suggested that all "good Mexicans ought to expect to return to Mexico," most Mexicanos resisted outside pressure to learn English or renounce their Mexican citizenship (102). And while local banks hired Spanishspeaking employees to facilitate wire transfers back to Mexico, sojourners recall quite vividly that their lifestyle rubbed nativist Americans the wrong way, especially when jobs grew scarce and savings accounts dwindled in the 1930s.Innis-Jimenez closes with two chapters on the Great Depression where he argues that its traumatic consequences-including repatriation and unemployment-actually created a South Chicago "that was more physically and culturally ensconced in the neighborhood" (138). For example, he demonstrates how baseball provided a distraction from the gritty mills and economic woes while promoting positive lifestyle changes and grooming future community leaders. …