Spazialità e confitti razziali sugli autobus di Hisaye Yamamoto e Brando Skyhorse

In contrast with the traditional image of private mobility and car culture in Los Angeles, this essay focuses on two short stories set on public transportation: “Wilshire Bus” by Hisaye Yamamoto (1950) and “Rules of the Road” by Brando Skyhorse (in The Madonnas of Echo Park, 2010). Both stories stage episodes of racial conflict on buses and highlight explosive ambiguities in two separate historical moments that share a similar rhetoric of progress and racial integration. Through these two texts, the essay focuses on the representation and articulation of urban space, historical memory, and social crisis in the city of Los Angeles, exploring the ways in which they manifest themselves in the cracks of utopian narratives surrounding social integration and multiculturalism.