For Mother’s Day, author Natalia Molina remembers her grandmother Doña Natalia Barraza, the impressive woman who opened the Nayarit restaurant in Echo Park, Los Angeles in 1951. The restaurant became an urban anchor for the local community of Mexican immigrants, offering a space of belon...
By Jessica T. Simes, author of Punishing Places: The Geography of Mass Imprisonment
Despite growing attention to the problem of mass incarceration, we are still only beginning to capture its far-reaching harms. Scholars and activists have revealed mass incarceration’s impact on the ind...
By Andrea Leverentz, author of Intersecting Lives: How Place Shapes Reentry
In October 2014, a bridge that connected Long Island in Boston Harbor to Moon Island — as well as Squantum Peninsula in Quincy, Massachusetts — was abruptly closed by Boston’s mayor. For over 80 years, Long Isl...