Paradise Transplanted

Migration and the Making of California Gardens

By Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo

Gardens are immobile, literally rooted in the earth, but they are also shaped by migration and by the transnational movement of ideas, practices, plants, and seeds. In Paradise Transplanted, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo reveals how successive conquests and diverse migrations have made Southern California gardens, and in turn how gardens influence social inequality, work, leisure, status, and our experiences of nature and community. Drawing on historical archival research, ethnography, and over one hundred interviews with a wide range of people including suburban homeowners, paid Mexican immigrant gardeners, professionals at the most elite botanical garden in the West, and immigrant community gardeners in the poorest neighborhoods of inner-city Los Angeles, this book offers insights into the ways that diverse global migrations and garden landscapes shape our social world.

About the Author: 

Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo is Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and the author ofGendered Transitions, God’s Heart Has No Borders, and Domestica. She is regarded as one of the most accomplished and imaginative immigration scholars in sociology today.