Here are two books on immigration for which we’ve
received recommendations from reliable sources, so please check them out..—TPOI
editor
Elvira's Faith and Barack's Challenge: The Grassroots Struggle for the Rights of Undocumented Families
By Reverend Walter L Coleman (Author), John Womack (Editor),
Elvira Arellano (Contributor)
Wrightwood Press (September 6, 2016)
John Womack, author of the acclaimed Zapata and the
Mexican Revolution, writes this about Elvira’s Faith:
I can testify that it really is a wonderfully clarifying
book, also a deeply encouraging book. It is about a young woman from Maravatío,
Michoacán, intent in the economic wreckage of Mexico in 1995-96 just on making
enough money to pay for her aged, unwell parents’ medicine, migrating north for
work in Mexico, finally heading alone al Gran Norte, sin documentos, eventually
for good in the US labor market, bearing a son here, eventually finding herself
in Chicago, working in the crews cleaning planes at O’Hare, arrested in the
typically hysterical post-9/11 raids to catch working people without papers,
released, but under the constant threat of deportation—and then meeting the
great Pilsen organizers, Emma Lozano and her husband, Rev. Walter Coleman, and
joining their terrific fight for justice for undocumented migrants here.
Elvira is really the first of the great, conscious, brave, public
champions of Sanctuary in the USA in the 21st century. She spent the year
2006-2007 living with her son in Rev. Coleman’s church, living every day
protected night and day by the local community, then by plan, hers and the
local underground’s, escaping “Homeland Security” to get secretly from Chicago
to Los Angeles to begin a national campaign there for justice for the
undocumented.
The rest you can read in the book, and hopefully colleagues,
friends, and many students will too, learn from it, and act bravely on it. La
lucha sigue.
In
the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte
By David Bacon
University of California Press; Bilingual edition (May 23,
2017)
UCLA African American Studies lecturer Paul Von Blum
writes in Truthdig on June 30:
A new bilingual book by David Bacon offers both a dramatic
antidote to the deplorable reality of racism and a majestic life-affirming view
of these hidden women, men and children. "In the Fields of the North"
is a landmark fusion of journalism and documentary photography. Bacon is an
accomplished writer and photographer, with a long record of union organizing
for the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International
Ladies Garment Workers Union and others. He has effectively documented the
impact of globalization, the degrading conditions of workplaces for many
immigrants, the human consequences of migration, the political struggles for
workers' and human rights, and many related topics in his books and commentary.
But above all, Bacon is a documentary photographer of
extraordinary power, insight and skill. In his introductory comments to the
book, he is modest-too modest-about contributing to the long history of
socially conscious photography: "I hope my work contributes to this
tradition today." I have had the privilege and pleasure of teaching and
writing for many years about some of the giant American figures of this
tradition, including Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange,
Margaret Bourke-White, Roy DeCarava and Gordon Parks.[...]
Read the full review:
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