315 - Don Normark, "Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story"

New copy of Chávez Ravine, 1949: A Los Angeles Story by Don Normark

Hardcover

8.5" x 9.5"

Chronicle Books, 1999

143 pages

New, some scuffing on plastic book jacket. Small indentations on top and bottom edges of hardcover.

Est. Value - $85

In 1949, photographer Don Normark walked up into the hills of Los Angeles and found Chavez Ravine, a ramshackle Mexican-American neighborhood tucked away in Elysian Park. Enchanted, he stayed for a year amidst the wild roses, tin roofs, and wandering goats of this uniquely intact rural community on the city's outskirts. Accepted by the residents, Normark was able to photograph a life that, though bowed down by poverty, was lived fully, openly, and joyfully. That ended in 1950, when the residents of Chavez Ravine received letters from the government directing them to sell their homes and leave. Some sold, some were dragged out of their houses kicking and screaming. The emptied houses were razed to make way for Dodger Stadium. The past fifty years have not erased the memories of Los Desterrados, the uprooted descendants of Chavez Ravine. This beautiful, haunting book captures their images, their stories, and their bittersweet memories. A social and cultural history of Los Angeles and Mexican America, Chavez Ravine reclaims and celebrates this lost village from a simpler time.

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