In the Shadows of the Freeway: Growing Up Brown and Queer by Lydia R. Otero (review)

Intersectionality defines the genre of In the Shadows of the Freeway: Growing Up Brown and Queer as much as it does the author's identity. Born in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, on Valentine's/State-hood Day 1955, Lydia Otero knew they were queer from the moment they could understand difference.¹ Only later did they learn that brownness was another form of difference that would shape their life. The constant awareness of otherness pervades this chronicle of one lived experience growing up in Tucson between 1955 and 1973.

Scholars in many fields, Chicanx/Latinx, ethnic, gender, queer, Southwest borderlands, and urban studies, as well as history and geography, will find themselves drawn to this memoir. A departure from Otero's prior, strictly academic writings, In the Shadows of the Freeway is equal parts autoethnography and history. Otero masterfully weaves together their own remembrances of Tucson during that time with primary sources such as newspaper accounts, manuscripts, dissertations, and some of their own earlier work. Assiduously researched, this work documents social, cultural, and physical dislocations in the context of personal narrative. The result is simultaneously irresistible, painful, humble, and unafraid.

Queerness, racism, classism, and urban renewal are the themes that draw the reader in as Otero unburdens themselves of emotions as fresh today as six decades ago. Indeed, the motifs could as easily be portraying Tucson between the turn of the twenty-first century and today. Though the city has grown exponentially, the issues remain similar, and the solutions elusive.

Otero probes inequities in systems, whether educational, economic, political, environmental, or social, based on race, class, gender, and queerness. They do not purport to have the answers to these acrimonious problems, but they do know the tragic effects on human life. Plagued with multiple deaths in the family attributable to the unfavorable conditions created by urban renewal and the disparities between isolated Kroeger Lane barrio, where Otero grew up, and the increasingly wealthy and white areas in the northern and eastern parts of the city, the memories of loss are palpable.

Despite the adversity they faced, Otero is resilient, reconciling their love of place and family with the realities of the city they have long called home. Their remembrances are stark: "being brown and queer and from Farmington Road framed my perceptions of myself and how those from the outside world saw me. When I call up my earliest memories, I think of dirt" (p. 6). Hardships were plentiful: their house constantly flooded, they had no streetlights, sidewalks, or parks like white children in wealthier parts of town, and they were surrounded by environmental hazards. Flood abatement in wealthier parts of town resulted in the diversion of floodwaters through Otero's barrio. Water flowed through their home, which "had concrete floors … and other furniture sat on bricks that kept them raised above the floor … not based on my parents' design choices" (p. 46).

The narratives of oppression unfold as the pages turn, intertwining Otero's cultural heritage with their queerness, embodied by their nickname, La Butch. Otero recalls: "My queerness never faded into the background, and it stood at the core of almost every dialogue that took place in my head and every decision I made" (p. 4). The reader is left wanting to hear more about the constant tug of war between identity and a desire to forge a better life, and how that shaped Otero's path.

Misplaced in a program called 1C, Otero's earliest educational experience did not bode well for the future. English-dominant, like their parents, Otero spoke but a few words of Spanish, yet school administrators made assumptions based on skin color that Otero "and those like me needed remedial English and Americanization because we lived on the wrong side of town and were therefore inherently deficient in language and culture. The school district endorsed...