SGV Connect 105: Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A.

This week’s SGV Connect features Chris Greenspon’s interview with author and history professor James Zarsadiaz about his recent book, Resisting Change in Suburbia: Asian Immigrants and Frontier Nostalgia in L.A. (available for purchase from University of California Press).

Zarsadiaz’ book focuses on six communities, five in the San Gabriel Valley (Walnut, Diamond Bar, Rowland Heights, and Heights, and a community in the city of Pomona known as Phillips Ranch) and Chino Hills in San Bernardino. The six communities have a similar development pattern and history where a large incoming community of immigrants from Asia changed neighborhoods and created discomfort for their existing, mostly white, new neighbors.

“And so I talked a great length about the ways in which there was peacemaking. But of course, there was still a bit of hurt feelings from both sides. And a lot of the criticism was generated around concerns and of immigrants and nativism; but some of it also was based on just kind of discomfort with change,” Zarsadiaz says in the interview. 

“Broadly speaking, I think for a lot of white residents, who were critical believed that it wasn’t necessarily always rooted in nativism or xenophobia. For them, it was just kind of seeing their world changed before their eyes and trying to grapple with that change.”

To read the rest of the interview, click here or listen in at SGV Connect, below.

SGV Connect is supported by Foothill Transit, offering car-free travel throughout the San Gabriel Valley with connections to the new Gold Line Stations across the Foothills and Commuter Express lines traveling into the heart of downtown L.A. To plan your trip, visit Foothill Transit. “Foothill Transit. Going Good Places.”

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