ABSTRACT
Cities and metropolises have always permitted a certain degree of mobility to strangers. It is within their urban landscape that strangers can move from one national setting to another, between the multicultural interstices and thresholds that allow them to survive the forces of assimilation and segregation. By providing a reflection on the complex vision of strangers and cosmopolitanism north of the US–Mexico border, this chapter reevaluates the cultural pluralism of and the claim for visibility from Mexican communities inhabiting urban spaces in the United States, such as Upper Manhattan in New York. By analyzing Valeria Luiselli’s creative production, Papeles Falsos (Sidewalks, 2010), Los Ingrávidos (Faces in the Crowd, 2011), and “Zapata Boulevard” (2015), this chapter demonstrates how transnational spaces in global megacities like New York provide a space for the visibility and acceptance of cosmopolitan strangers, thus enabling a re-understanding of subaltern and hegemonic structures in our present times.
