Glimpses of Phoenix: The Desert Metropolis in Written and Visual Media by David William Foster (review)

Phoenix, Arizona is a late bloomer in comparison with other large metropolitan centers, as regards modernization, social imaginaries, and cultural self-identity. While there are those who would negate Phoenix its rich narrative history, if one digs deep enough, both diversity and rapid development of cultural production are apparent, especially in the Chicano communities. David William Foster, erudite and flâneur, not only takes the reader by hand, strolling through urban and suburban spaces of the Valley of the Sun, he also recovers forgotten and sometimes purposefully buried Phoenix history, as reflected in the specific regional cultural production analyzed. That is, the expert insight analysis arms the reader of Glimpses with an archaeologist’s brush and magnifying glass to examine the mirage of desert utopian communities, highlighting urban myth and a prevailing dystopia. Phoenix’s historic “dirty secrets” (18) are revealed, firmly establishing a less than idealistic undercurrent upon which much of said cultural production is thematically based.

David William Foster is Regents’ Professor of Spanish and Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. Author of over 80 books including Sao Polo: Perspectives on the City and Cultural Production (2011), which investigates the Brazilian megalopolis through a select grouping of cultural production, Glimpses similarly traces and defines urban Phoenix spaces and history through its own diverse grouping of narrative works. Foster is also the author of El ambiente nuestro: Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Writing (2006) and, with over forty percent of Glimpses dedicated to Chicano issues, Foster clearly continues an academic positionality towards cultural diversity and social discourse that inspires cultural awareness in the reader. It is therefore important to highlight two framing referents that contextualize this text. First, Foster is a long-time resident of Phoenix, unlike many who write about the city’s misgivings, and is an expert in urban studies. He has witnessed first-hand the appearance, and sometimes disappearance, of the neighborhoods, communities, and spaces represented in the cultural production analyzed in the text. Second, although he writes as a privileged white male, his considerable experience in the portrayal of strong women, gender issues, and queer perspectives offers the reader a distinct optic into the diverse underpinnings of Phoenix society.

Morphing from flâneur to detective and academic, Foster’s perspective and cultural analyses often are as witty as the subject matter of the works analyzed, engaging all potentially interested readers to recoup the rich history of the region by simply scratching below the surface rhetoric. Digging even deeper by peeling away sociopolitical layers, very much as a geologist investigates geologic depositional strata, Foster reveals issues of homophobia and misogyny, adding feminist and queer optics to the debate. By doing so, Foster questions the flâneur’s privileged perspective as male, white, heterosexual, and possessor of various levels of social insight by introducing key topics such as gender, race, social class, and homophobia (83). Other socio-cultural issues analyzed include political corruption, prostitution, winter migrants, and immigration in the urban space that is the Phoenix of today. Foster’s analyses clearly result from arduous sociopolitical and scholarly research and the conclusions often surprise the reader not familiar with Phoenix’s history.

Phoenix’s late arrival to modernity is one of the most important themes offered by this text. First, its cultural heritage is contextualized socially and historically as regards the intense Southern influence of the settlers, the immigration of various cultures to the region, the key infrastructure and landmarks left behind by the Hohokam Indians, and the tendency to compare itself to more firmly established communities of the West such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. Second, textual and visual analyses of key authors, either Phoenix natives, residents, or those simply inspired by the Valley of the Sun, reveal rich veins of Midwest neighborhood transplants, Mexican and other Latin American immigrants, Chicano community tensions, political scandals, and unsolved murder cases. In essence, the analyses open Phoenix’s dusty attic...