Thank you to Perseus Books & NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available July 14th 2020

Like his beloved sprawling city, Mario Alejandro Ariza's "Disposable City" covers a lot of ground. With everything from immigration reform and American Indian/American Native activism to glitzy parks and million dollar housing markets, Ariza tries to show us the tangible and very real threat of climate change. In both personal encounters and research, Ariza puts together an intricate and foreboding warning. Even for a reader like me, who is not from Florida and doesn't know a lot about climate change, Ariza's text was engaging and educational. Personally, I enjoyed the he cleverly juxtapositions contrasting viewpoints, like disucssing the preservation of the Everglades from a Native perspective and from the Army perspective. Towards the end, I found myself nodding off a bit, only because the information can become repetitive and without clear, practical solutions, it can frustrating. But perhaps that's the start of another book from this author.

3 out of 5 🌟 A memoir of an environmental activist

I usually start my reviews with a short description of a book and this is a part I struggled the most while reading this title. What is it about? Each chapter tackles a different issue, either about social justice or environmental matters. The book is all over the place: from selling houses with a 30-year mortgage on sinking parcels, through shrinking Everglades and endangered households of native inhabitants, to redlining and violence towards black residents. Plus huge pythons and one octopus in the garage.
Summarizing, 'Disposable City' is about everything that is wrong with the world today with a special focus on Miami, Florida.

What I turned me off the most was that the whole book is written as a memoir. A highly detailed day-to-day journal about the author's life. It even includes a whole breakfast menu of one of the hotels. If a book can have ADD (*Atention Deficit Disorder), this one has.

However, the book shows several critical topics that are, most of the time, completely ignored by the mainstream media. I was really touched by the chapter about immigrants' problems and how they are mistreated by the officials. Also, the sinking of Florida isn't a hoax but our near Future. All these problems are gravely important but unfortunately, the message is just too hard to read.

*Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. Opinions and feelings are my own.*