We will have midterm presentations during March 9 and March 16. You are required to read and present on a book in any format that you choose (role play, Powerpoint, video, diorama, art project, etc.) to share with the class what you have learned.
These are suggested books that offer a more in-depth look at immigration and issues related to the border. I have chosen both fiction and non-fiction books and tried to present a range of authors and topics for you to choose from. All of the books listed below can be found in the Berkeley libraries. However, you are not limited to this selection and if you find a book that you think is relevant to the course, please let me know.
Into the Beautiful North, Luis Alberto Urrea
"Nayeli is a young woman in the poor but tight-knit coastal Mexican town of Tres Camarones who spends her days serving tacos and helping her feisty aunt Irma get elected as the town's first female mayor. Abandoned by her father who headed north for work years before, Nayeli is hit with the realization that her hometown is all but abandoned by men, leaving it at the mercy of drug gangsters. So Nayeli hatches an elaborate scheme inspired by The Magnificent Seven: with three friends, she heads north to find seven Mexican men and smuggle them back into Mexico to protect the town. What she discovers along the way, of course, surprises her."
Desert Blood: The Juarez Murders, Alicia Gaspar de Alba
"In a genre populated with strong women, Gaspar de Alba's Ivon Villa stands out as unforgettable. A visiting professor at an L.A. college, Ivon is smart, beautiful, and gay. She and her partner, Brigit, decide to adopt a baby from Mexico, and Ivon travels to her native El Paso to see the child. On the plane, she reads an article about the murdered bodies of more than 100 women found in the desert outside Juarez. The crime wave hits home when the mother of the baby she was to adopt becomes one of the victims. Then Ivon's little sister, Irene, goes missing after an evening in Juarez. With the help of her cousin and a nervous priest, Ivon desperately searches for Irene while dealing with their accusatory mother and corrupt border patrol officers."
[I highly, highly recommend this one. It's long, but a page-turner!]
Lives on the Line: Dispatches from the U.S.-Mexico Border, Miriam Davidson
"Less well known than the Tijuana-San Diego border, the dividing line between the twin cities of Nogales, AZ, and Nogales, Mexico, nevertheless constitutes an important border crossing. Davidson's informative, journalistic account of this rapidly changing region depicts this boundary as a microcosm of what is happening along the U.S.-Mexican border as a whole. Telling the tragic stories of five people and their families living in these border cities, she highlights the socioeconomic, public health, and political problems that have developed as a result of NAFTA and the increased enforcement of migration laws. The author details the large, destabilizing migration to border cities from Central and South Mexico; the lack of adequate urban planning, resulting in densely populated slums; the growth of urban youth gangs; and the large increase in crime and drugs. She also shows how inconsistent and overzealous enforcement of immigration laws has exacerbated already serious social and political problems in these communities. Davidson balances her expos with some positive news: NAFTA-related economic growth as well as increased acceptance by the U.S. and Mexican governments of the two countries' interconnected futures."
Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America's Desert Borderlands in the New Era, John Annerino
"It is America’s killing field, and the deaths keep mounting. As the political debate has intensified and demonstrators have taken to the streets, more and more illegal border-crossers die trying to cross the desert on their way to what they hope will be a better life. Dead in Their Tracks is a first hand account of the perils associated with crossing the desert on foot. John Annerino recounts his experience making that trek with four illegal immigrants—and his return trips to document the struggles of those who persist in this treacherous journey. In this spellbinding narrative, he takes readers into the 'empty quarter' of the Southwest to meet the migrant workers and drug runners, the ranchers and Border Patrol agents, who populate today’s headlines."
The Devil's Highway: A True Story, Luis Alberto Urrea
"So many illegal immigrants die in the desert Southwest of the U.S. that only notorious catastrophes make headlines. Urrea reconstructs one such incident in the Sonoran Desert, the ordeal of sun and thirst of two dozen men in May 2001, half of whom suffered excruciating deaths. They came from Vera Cruz; their so-called guide came from Guadalajara. Jesus Lopez Ramos was no master of orienteering, however, just an expendable bottom-feeder in the border's human-smuggling racket. Tracing their lives and the routes to the border, Urrea adopts a slangy, surreal style in which the desert landscape shimmers and distorts, while in desiccated border settlements criminals, officials, and vigilantes patrol for human cargo such as the men from Vera Cruz. The imaginative license Urrea takes, paralleling the laconic facts of the case that he incorporates into his narrative, produces a powerful, almost diabolical impression of the disaster and the exploitative conditions at the border."
Diary of an Undocumented Immigrant, Ramon Perez and translated by Dick J. Reavis
"The history of the United States in large part is a history of immigration, an immigration of working class peoples. Usually documented by sociologists, economists and other social scientists, that history becomes sanitized, devoid of the sweat, toil and tears of real people's lives. Here, now, is an unexpected document from the very hand of a laborer whose trials have been even more burdensome, for he works in the United States illegally. Here is his odyssey through the United States, his endless trail of menial jobs, his indignities, his humor and optimism as well. Perhaps this will help us understand the intelligent, persevering, hard-working human beings we usually take for granted as they wait on our tables, clean our houses, pick our fruits and vegetables."
The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez, Jimmy Breslin
"A work of conscience that travels from San Matías Cuatchatyotla, a small dusty town in central Mexico, to the cold and wet streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this searing exposé chronicles the life and tragic death of an illegal immigrant worker, along with the broader issues of municipal corruption and America’s deadly and controversial border policy. In November 1999, an accidental death at a Brooklyn construction site made headlines because the developers had major fund-raising ties to the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But the dead man’s name went all but unmentioned in the press coverage. The story behind Gutiérrez’s death is one of corruption, bad politics, and indifference to people whose lives are perceived not to count. With the issue of Mexican immigration and border policy taking center stage in our national debate, Gutiérrez’s story takes on even more relevance. The account of his flight, his desperation in a foreign and hostile country, and his needless death at the hands of unscrupulous forces should be a wake-up call to us all."
Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, Ruben Martinez
"The U.S.-Mexican border is one of the most permeable boundaries in the world, breached daily by Mexicans in search of work. Thousands die crossing the line and those who reach "the other side" are branded illegals, undocumented and unprotected. Crossing Over puts a human face on the phenomenon, following the exodus of the Chávez clan, an extended Mexican family who lost three sons in a tragic border accident. Martínez follows the migrants' progress from their small southern Mexican town of Cherán to California, Wisconsin, and Missouri where far from joining the melting pot, Martínez argues, the seven million migrants in the U.S. are creating a new culture that will alter both Mexico and the United States as the two countries come increasingly to resemble each other."
Enrique's Journey, Sonia Nazario
"In this astonishing true story, award-winning journalist Sonia Nazario recounts the unforgettable odyssey of a Honduran boy who braves unimaginable hardship and peril to reach his mother in the United States. When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade. Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. Years pass. After eleven years apart, he decides he will go find her. With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope–and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States."
Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez, Marjorie Agosin and translated by Celeste Kostopulos-Cooperman
"Over the past decade over 350 women around the city of Juárez, Mexico, have been raped and murdered. The remains of these brutalised young women continue to be found scattered in the parched desert, vacant city lots, and roadside ditches. Others are never found. In 'Secrets in the Sand,' Agosin through her words and images invites her readers to bear witness to the reality that the grieving families of the disappeared and murdered young women face every day. As a poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin has dedicated her life's work to the search for justice and human dignity."
Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana, Norma Iglesias and translated by Michael Stone
"Published originally as La flor mas bella de la maquiladora, this beautifully written book is based on interviews the author conducted with more than fifty Mexican women who work in the assembly plants along the U.S.-Mexico border. A descriptive analytic study conducted in the late 1970s, the book uses compelling testimonials to detail the struggles these women face. The experiences of women in maquiladoras are attracting increasing attention from scholars, especially in the context of ongoing Mexican migration to the country's northern frontier and in light of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book is among the earliest accounts of the physical and psychological toll exacted from the women who labor in these plants. Iglesias Prieto captures the idioms of these working women so that they emerge as dynamic individuals, young and articulate personalities, inexorably engaged in the daily struggle to change the fundamental conditions of their exploitation."
Please comment below with the book you would like to read and make sure you have not chosen a book that another person has already selected.
Happy reading! :]
Happy reading! :]
Posts
