Streets, Bedrooms, and Patios: The Ordinariness of Diversity in Urban Oaxaca: Ethnographic Portraits of the Urban Poor, Transvestites, Discapacitados, and Other Popular Cultures
Higgins (anthropology, Univ. of Northern Colorado) and Coen (an anthropologist and codirector of Zacalero Creative Cultural Productions, San Francisco) present portraits of several cultural and social groups in the city of Oaxaca, Mexico. This metropolitan area of 500,000 people contains a wide variety of residents. The authors interviewed the urban poor, transvestite and female prostitutes, the disabled, gays and lesbians, and AIDS activists in order to demonstrate the diversity of customs in this Mexican metropolis. They contrast these ondas, or "lifestyles," with one another and those of the average Mexican. The text mixes excerpts from interviews with anthropological analysis. The ethnographic detail and complex terminology make this book most appropriate for academic libraries.DGwen Gregory, New Mexico State Univ., Las CrucesCopyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.