Transnational Sport in the American West: Oaxaca California Basketball by Bernardo Ramirez Rios (review)

Through the heartening story of the barefooted boys from Oaxaca, México, who won a basketball tournament with no shoes because of poverty, anthropologist Bernardo Ramirez Rios enters the scholarly discussion of Latinos and sports with Transnational Sport in the American West: Oaxaca California Basketball. The author "examine[s] how participants create identities through the continuous cultural practice of basketball, which connects Los Angeles and Oaxaca" (6). The book merits attention over the ethnographic methodology the author uses throughout the work, shedding light on Oaxaqueños and the sport of basketball across national boundaries.

Ramirez Rios completes this through five chapters that detail how sports construct identity. He situates Oaxaca as the center of the study because it is one of the most geographically and ethnically diverse places in México. "Migration Mentality and Immigration Reality" traces the transnational story of Esteban Sol and the way his peers, amid pressures to live undocumented in the United States, used basketball as a medium to navigate and adapt to life in America, as well as retain their ethnic Oaxacan culture. In his second chapter, "History of Oaxacan Basketball," Ramirez Rios situates his research within the broader historiography of Latinx history and sports. His scholarly intervention studies migration, identity formation, and the flow of beliefs of the Oaxacan community between the United States and México through the parameter of sports. The author is in conversation with academics who have traced Latinx history and the role sports played in race dynamics, such as Jorge Iber, José M. Alamillo, and Ignacio Garcia. In Chapter 3, "Oaxacan Basketball Arrives in the United States," Ramirez Rios delves into the ethnography methodology of using basketball as an analytical lens to investigate how the Oaxacan community develops its societal practices in the United States. The scholar evaluates major Oaxacan basketball tournaments such as La Copa Benito Juárez and La Copa Oaxaca and their community importance in places such as México, Los Angeles, and New Jersey. He acknowledges the basketball tournaments are a window for Oaxaqueños to participate in their cultural practices and have a better sense of their Latinx sociopolitical stance in the United States. The next two chapters are a thematic and methodological extension of the previous chapter. In Chapter 4, the anthropologist studies La Copa Benito Juárez in the Mexican state. For Oaxaqueños in America, it is essential to visit their mecca in the tournament because the home-going trip anchors them to their native customs and principles. For local Oaxaqueños, the contest represents the most prevalent basketball tournament in the state. In "Next Generation," he examines the narratives of Pika Bautista, Lola Solsa, and Miguel Hernandez and the way they negotiate cultural and social formation. He concludes the book by reinstating the significance of sports studies, specifically basketball, as a social identity-maker.

Criticisms of this book are few; the book is repetitive, which is briefly distracting. Throughout the book, there are variations of the same theme on how the study is transnational through cultural practices and how basketball plays a role in these exchanges. This idea is essential but does not need to be repeated so frequently. However, a standout of the book is the author's use and presentation of evidence. Ramirez Rios captured vast interviews of the experiences and voices of Oaxaqueños living in California and Oaxaca, México. In his pool of interviewees, he not only included men but children and women as well. These interviews are the foremost source and climax of his analysis in Chapters 3 through 5. Through these interviews, the author captures stories like those of Lola Sola, who, in the midst of being a product of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), found that sports, food, and religion provided her with a sense of belonging. The interviews conceptualize themes of migration and citizenship. In addition to...