I Speak of the City

Mexico City at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Paper $27.00 ISBN: 9780226273587 Published April 2015

Cloth $48.00 ISBN: 9780226792712 Published February 2013

E-book $10.00 to $27.00 About E-books ISBN: 9780226792736 Published February 2015

In this dazzling multidisciplinary tour of Mexico City, Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo focuses on the period 1880 to 1940, the decisive decades that shaped the city into what it is today.

Through a kaleidoscope of expository forms, I Speak of the City connects the realms of literature, architecture, music, popular language, art, and public health to investigate the city in a variety of contexts: as a living history textbook, as an expression of the state, as a modernist capital, as a laboratory, and as language. Tenorio’s formal imagination allows the reader to revel in the free-flowing richness of his narratives, opening startling new vistas onto the urban experience.

From art to city planning, from epidemiology to poetry, this book challenges the conventional wisdom about both Mexico City and the turn-of-the-century world to which it belonged. And by engaging directly with the rise of modernism and the cultural experiences of such personalities as Hart Crane, Mina Loy, and Diego Rivera, I Speak of the City will find an enthusiastic audience across the disciplines.

Table of Contents

Contents
Review Quotes
Awards

Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Translations

Introduction

PART I. RIGHT AROUND 1910…
1 On 1910 and the City of the Centennial
2 On 1910 Contrasts: Washington and Mexico City
3 Interiors

PART II. 1919
4 In and Around 1919 Mexico City

PART III. THE BROWN ATLANTIS
5 The Brown Atlantis
6 Transparency

PART IV. ODALISQUE-MANIA
7 Japan
8 India

PART V. SCIENCE AND CITY
9 Science and the City, Stories from the Sidewalk
10 On Lice, Rats, and Mexicans

PART VI. LANGUAGE
11 Whispers
12 The Street Muse

Final Word
Archives Cited
Notes
Index

Review Quotes

Margaret Chowning | University of California, Berkeley

“This luminous, lyrical set of essays comes at Mexico City’s cultural transformations and the global flows that informed them from a number of angles, each more provocative and fascinating than the last."

Thomas Bender | New York University

“I Speak of the City is a work of remarkable erudition and interpretation of the modernity and cosmopolitanism of Mexico City. It is a work of rich implication for our thinking about the nature of modernity and of world cities in general. Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo is a unique and exciting guide to layered history and cultural connections of one of the world’s great cities.”

Rubén Gallo | Princeton University

“I Speak of the City is an excellent and beautifully written cultural history of twentieth-century Mexico City. Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo displays a vast erudition as he takes the reader on a tour of the city’s literature, art, architecture, design, journalism, music, popular sayings, and—not for the faint of heart—the deadly typhus epidemics.”

Choice

"Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo delivers insightful, multidisciplinary examinations of Mexican culture, society, and history with [Mexico] City as teh main actor. . . . A unique vision and a solid entry for scholars, graduate students, and researchers interested in Mexico or urban history in general. Highly recommended."

The University of Chicago Press: Gordon J. Laing Award
Won

Society of Architectural Historians: Spiro Kostof Book Award
Won

View Recent Awards page for more award winning books.

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