It is now widely accepted that our experience of the world is deeply shaped by concepts of space. From territorial borders, to distinctions between public and private space, to the way we dwell in a building or move between rooms, space is central to how we inhabit our environment and make sense of our place within it. Little wonder, then, that space shapes our very language, both in our metaphors (as with “central” and “deeply”) and in what and how we write. Even the movement of the pencil across the page, or the cursor across the screen, is a spatial phenomenon, and one that creative writers and poets have integrated into their work. Literature explores and gives expression to the myriad ways in which space impacts human experience.

This chapter puts Marxist geography in dialogue with scholarship in critical ethnic studies in order to provide a critical basis for studying the urban geographies of racial capitalism. It focuses on work in black, Chicanx, and indigenous studies that has nuanced and extended the “spatial turn” introduced by scholars such as David Harvey, Neil Smith, Doreen Massey, and Cindi Katz. Discussions of gendered black geographies (Sylvia Wynter, Katherine McKittrick, and Rashad Shabazz), indigenous geographies (Laura Furlan), and Latinx geographies (Mary Pat Brady, Raúl Homero Villa) contextualize the stakes of urban literature by black, Chicanx, and indigenous authors such as Marita Bonner, Danez Smith, Helena María Viramontes, and Tommy Orange.