Download or read book A Stranger at My Door Finding My Humanity on the U S Mexico Border written by Peg Bowden and published by . This book was released on 2019-08-05 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a man appears at the door of her home in the Sonoran desert lost and half-dead, Peg Bowden must examine her personal values, which aren't currently aligned with the politics of her homeland. This true story of shared humanity explores the significance of the borders in all our lives, and the fear and xenophobia that keep them standing.
Download or read book With Their Own Blood written by Virginia Roberts and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-31 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His wife dead, Elisa Green Pennington gathered up his brood of twelve young children in 1857 and left Texas for California, the promised land. The Penningtons could not have imagined what the untamed frontier had in store for them. After a difficult trek across West Texas and New Mexico, they were forced by sicknesses and circumstances to settle in the newly claimed Gadsden Purchase - present-day southern Arizona - where members of the clan and their descendants would remain into Arizona's statehood years. At the heart of this saga is Larcena Pennington Page Scott, who is witness as her loved ones are killed and her family's livelihood and property stolen. Larcena lived well into the twentieth century to tell the story of her captivity by Apaches and her miraculous escape from the captors, of outlawry and murder along the Mexican border, of disease, hunger, and isolation, and of the unceasing depredations by hostile Apaches during the 1860s and '70s. Using family letters, papers, and primary documents from all over the Southwest, Virginia Culin Roberts traces the lives of Larcena and her family. Roberts presents a real-life story of the rigors of surviving in a hostile and unforgiving land, transcending family history to provide a framework for telling the tale of the western frontier in the bloody Civil War and antebellum years.
Download or read book Home Is a Stranger written by Parnaz Foroutan and published by Amberjack Publishing. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A thought-provoking memoir about the challenges of personal and national relations." —Foreword Reviews New travel nonfiction from a break-out novelist and recipient of a PEN Emerging Voice fellowship that speaks to the immigrant and female experiences of America and Iran Unmoored by the death of her father and disenchanted by the American Dream, Parnaz Foroutan leaves Los Angeles for Iran, nineteen years after her family fled the religious police state brought in by the Islamic Theocracy. From the moment Parnaz steps off the plane in Tehran, she contends with a world she only partially understands. Struggling with her own identity in a culture that feels both foreign and familiar, she tries to find a place for herself between the American girl she is and the woman she hopes to become. Written with the same literary grace and passion as her fiction, Home Is a Stranger is a memoir about the meaning of desire, the transcendence of boundaries, and the journey to find home.
Download or read book The Distance Between Us written by Reyna Grande and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces the author's experiences as an illegal child immigrant, describing her father's violent alcoholism, her efforts to obtain a higher education, and the inspiration of Latina authors.
Download or read book A Land of Hard Edges written by Peg Bowden and published by . This book was released on 2014-03-02 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Land of Hard Edges: Serving the Front Lines of the Border is a series of true stories and personal reflections by Peg Bowden, a retired nurse, who volunteers at a migrant shelter on the Mexico border. The author lives in the Arizona borderlands, a sort of third country, with one foot in Mexico and the other in the United States. She joins a group called the Samaritans, traveling weekly to a shelter known as el comedor, providing clothing, medical supplies and counsel to migrants seeking the American Dream. Investigating why thousands of people are willing to risk their lives crossing the Sonoran Desert into the U.S. where they are despised by so many, Peg begins to understand the complexities of human migration. She reflects on the power of love and family that drives people into the treacherous landscapes of southern Arizona.
Download or read book The Wind Doesn t Need a Passport written by Tyche Hendricks and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There are other books dealing with life at the border, but none as intelligent, searching, objective or encompassing as Tyche Hendricks' vivid evocation of this region--its people, its landscape, its industry, its problems and its unique culture."—Peter Schrag, author of Not Fit for Society: Immigration and Nativism in America "This vivid, evocative book made me think of the Robert Frost line, 'Something there is that doesn't love a wall.' Tyche Hendricks' multilayered portrait of the human communities that transcend the U.S.-Mexico border should remind us all of what an artificial thing barriers, fences and checkpoints are. Maybe, just maybe, someday we, like so much of western Europe, can do without them."—Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains "This is an ambitious undertaking and Hendricks excels, finding stories along the way that illustrate the clash between, within and along that nearly 2,000-mile stretch of territory. Her reporting illustrates that for many U.S.-Mexico border residents, the international bridge is something you cross on your way to visit family, shop for groceries, get to a doctor or work."—Macarena Del Rocio Hernandez, University of Houston "Dear President Obama, next time you are at Camp David spend a couple of hours reading The Wind Doesn't Need a Passport. While the Health Care overhaul may well come to define your presidency, immigration will define the future of our country. In this marvelous book—rigorously grounded, smartly argued, beautifully crafted, Tyche Hendricks captures, in stories of biblical proportion, the contours of the magical line that at once unites us and divides us as Americans and as neighbors of our indispensable partner in the South. Ms. Hendricks's book, Mr. President, will remind you just what is at stake in getting immigration reform right. All Californians, Texans, and Arizonians, who think they know the border, should read this book. It is essential reading for our times."—Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, Fisher Membership Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, and co-author of Latinos: Remaking America
Download or read book Both Sides of the Border written by Terry Overton and published by Ambassador International. This book was released on 2021-03-30 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by True Current Events.Dolores, Ernesto, and Emilio Sanchez are on a quest to America to find work and to save their family, who has been devastated by their father's accident and the drought in their home country of Honduras. But making their way to America would be too expensive for a family stricken by poverty. With only their faith in God to see them through, the teenaged siblings set off for their new home, despite the threat from the cartel, corrupt police officers, starvation, and death. Meanwhile, Eva Jordan is determined to start a new life on the American side of the Mexican border, hoping to shake off the scars from a horrible marriage. Despite her mother's concern for her daughter living so close to the border, Eva decides to take a vacation to the other side to sharpen up her Spanish and relax before her new job begins. She is struck by the beautiful towns of Mexico, but slowly, her eyes are opened to the dangers that are knocking at her front door. But when a hurricane washes away the border walls, will the two sides collide in hatred or unite in perfect harmony?
Download or read book Dovetails in Tall Grass written by Samantha Specks and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-08-24 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As war overtakes the frontier, Emma’s family farmstead is attacked by Dakota-Sioux warriors; on that same prairie, Oenikika desperately tries to hold on to her calling as a healer and follow the orders of her father, Chief Little Crow. When the war is over and revenge-fueled war trials begin, each young woman is faced with an impossible choice. In a swiftly changing world, both Emma and Oenikika must look deep within and fight for the truth of their convictions—even as horror and injustice unfolds all around them. Inspired by the true story of the thirty-eight Dakota-Sioux men hanged in Minnesota in 1862—the largest mass execution in US history—Dovetails in Tall Grass is a powerful tale of two young women connected by the fate of one man.
Download or read book Conquistador of the Useless written by Joshua Isard and published by Cinco Puntos Press. This book was released on 2013-06-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Average suburban middle manager Nathan's life starts to unravel around him as his wife goes baby crazy, his friend wants to climb Everest, and he lends a copy of "Cat's Cradle" to a local teenage girl.
Download or read book The House That Love Built written by Sarah Jackson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2021 Christian Book Award Finalist "Jackson's visionary account is a beautiful model of sacrificial love." -- Publishers Weekly Starred Review The House That Love Built is the quintessential story of one woman's questioning what it means to be an American--and a Christian--in light of a broken immigration system. Through tender stories of opening her heart and home to immigrants, Sarah Jackson shines a holy light on loving our neighbor. Sarah Jackson once thought immigration justice was administered through higher walls and longer fences. Then she met an immigrant--a deported young father separated from his US-citizen family--and everything changed. As Sarah began to know fractured families ravaged by threats in their homeland and further traumatized in US detention, biblical justice took on a new meaning. As Sarah opened her heart--and her home--to immigrants, she experienced a surprising transformation and the gift of extraordinary community. The work she began through the ministry of Casa de Paz joined the centuries-old Christian tradition of hospitality, shining a holy light on what it means to love our neighbor. The dilemma of undocumented people continues to hover over America, and it raises urgent questions for every Christian: What is our responsibility to the "stranger" in our midst? What does God's kingdom look like in the global-political reality of immigration? What difference can one person make? Sarah engages these questions through profound and tender stories, placing readers in the shoes of individuals on every side of the issue--asylum seekers torn from their families, the guards who oversee them, ordinary people with lapsed visas, the families left to survive on their own, the unheralded advocates for immigrants' rights, and the government officials who decide the fates of others. Ultimately, Sarah's journey illuminates how hope can be restored through simple yet radical acts of love.
Download or read book The Dispossessed written by John Washington and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive, in-depth book on the Trump administration’s assault on asylum protections Arnovis couldn’t stay in El Salvador. If he didn’t leave, a local gangster promised that his family would dress in mourning—that he would wake up with flies in his mouth. “It was like a bomb exploded in my life,” Arnovis said. The Dispossessed tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old Salvadoran man, Arnovis, whose family’s search for safety shows how the United States—in concert with other Western nations—has gutted asylum protections for the world’s most vulnerable. Crisscrossing the border and Central America, John Washington traces one man’s quest for asylum. Arnovis is separated from his daughter by US Border Patrol agents and struggles to find security after being repeatedly deported to a gang-ruled community in El Salvador, traumatic experiences relayed by Washington with vivid intensity. Adding historical, literary, and current political context to the discussion of migration today, Washington tells the history of asylum law and practice through ages to the present day. Packed with information and reflection, The Dispossessed is more than a human portrait of those who cross borders—it is an urgent and persuasive case for sharing the country we call home.
Download or read book On the Plain of Snakes written by Paul Theroux and published by Eamon Dolan Books. This book was released on 2019 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Legendary travel writer Paul Theroux drives the entire length of the US-Mexico border, then goes deep into the hinterland, on the back roads of Chiapas and Oaxaca, to uncover the rich, layered world behind today's brutal headlines. Paul Theroux has spent his life crisscrossing the globe in search of the histories and peoples that give life to the places they call home. Now, as immigration debates boil around the world, Theroux has set out to explore a country key to understanding our current discourse: Mexico. Just south of the Arizona border, in the desert region of Sonora, he finds a place brimming with vitality, yet visibly marked by both the US Border Patrol looming to the north and mounting discord from within. With the same humanizing sensibility he employed in Deep South, Theroux stops to talk with residents, visits Zapotec mill workers in the highlands, and attends a Zapatista party meeting, communing with people of all stripes who remain south of the border even as their families brave the journey north. From the writer praised for his "curiosity and affection for humanity in all its forms" (New York Times Book Review), On the Plain of Snakes is an exploration of a region in conflict.
Download or read book Detained and Deported written by Margaret Regan and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2015-03-10 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world On a bright Phoenix morning, Elena Santiago opened her door to find her house surrounded by a platoon of federal immigration agents. Her children screamed as the officers handcuffed her and drove her away. Within hours, she was deported to the rough border town of Nogales, Sonora, with nothing but the clothes on her back. Her two-year-old daughter and fifteen-year-old son, both American citizens, were taken by the state of Arizona and consigned to foster care. Their mother’s only offense: living undocumented in the United States. Immigrants like Elena, who’ve lived in the United States for years, are being detained and deported at unprecedented rates. Thousands languish in detention centers—often torn from their families—for months or even years. Deportees are returned to violent Central American nations or unceremoniously dropped off in dangerous Mexican border towns. Despite the dangers of the desert crossing, many immigrants will slip across the border again, stopping at nothing to get home to their children. Drawing on years of reporting in the Arizona-Mexico borderlands, journalist Margaret Regan tells their poignant stories. Inside the massive Eloy Detention Center, a for-profit private prison in Arizona, she meets detainee Yolanda Fontes, a mother separated from her three small children. In a Nogales soup kitchen, deportee Gustavo Sanchez, a young father who’d lived in Phoenix since the age of eight, agonizes about the risks of the journey back. Regan demonstrates how increasingly draconian detention and deportation policies have broadened police powers, while enriching a private prison industry whose profits are derived from human suffering. She also documents the rise of resistance, profiling activists and young immigrant “Dreamers” who are fighting for the rights of the undocumented. Compelling and heart-wrenching, Detained and Deported offers a rare glimpse into the lives of people ensnared in America’s immigration dragnet.
Download or read book Talking to Strangers written by Malcolm Gladwell and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go wrong—now with a new afterword by the author. A Best Book of the Year: The Financial Times, Bloomberg, Chicago Tribune, and Detroit Free Press How did Fidel Castro fool the CIA for a generation? Why did Neville Chamberlain think he could trust Adolf Hitler? Why are campus sexual assaults on the rise? Do television sitcoms teach us something about the way we relate to one another that isn’t true? Talking to Strangers is a classically Gladwellian intellectual adventure, a challenging and controversial excursion through history, psychology, and scandals taken straight from the news. He revisits the deceptions of Bernie Madoff, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the Jerry Sandusky pedophilia scandal at Penn State University, and the death of Sandra Bland—throwing our understanding of these and other stories into doubt. Something is very wrong, Gladwell argues, with the tools and strategies we use to make sense of people we don’t know. And because we don’t know how to talk to strangers, we are inviting conflict and misunderstanding in ways that have a profound effect on our lives and our world. In his first book since his #1 bestseller David and Goliath, Malcolm Gladwell has written a gripping guidebook for troubled times.
Download or read book The Other End of the Leash written by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D. and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2009-02-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn to communicate with your dog—using their language “Good reading for dog lovers and an immensely useful manual for dog owners.”—The Washington Post An Applied Animal Behaviorist and dog trainer with more than twenty years’ experience, Dr. Patricia McConnell reveals a revolutionary new perspective on our relationship with dogs—sharing insights on how “man’s best friend” might interpret our behavior, as well as essential advice on how to interact with our four-legged friends in ways that bring out the best in them. After all, humans and dogs are two entirely different species, each shaped by its individual evolutionary heritage. Quite simply, humans are primates and dogs are canids (as are wolves, coyotes, and foxes). Since we each speak a different native tongue, a lot gets lost in the translation. This marvelous guide demonstrates how even the slightest changes in our voices and in the ways we stand can help dogs understand what we want. Inside you will discover: • How you can get your dog to come when called by acting less like a primate and more like a dog • Why the advice to “get dominance” over your dog can cause problems • Why “rough and tumble primate play” can lead to trouble—and how to play with your dog in ways that are fun and keep him out of mischief • How dogs and humans share personality types—and why most dogs want to live with benevolent leaders rather than “alpha wanna-bes!” Fascinating, insightful, and compelling, The Other End of the Leash is a book that strives to help you connect with your dog in a completely new way—so as to enrich that most rewarding of relationships.
Download or read book The Lost Continent written by Bill Bryson and published by VNR AG. This book was released on 1989 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country.
Download or read book The Crossing written by Cormac McCarthy and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1995-03-14 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The second volume of the award-winning Border Trilogy—From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road—fulfills the promise of All the Pretty Horses and at the same time give us a work that is darker and more visionary, a novel with the unstoppable momentum of a classic western and the elegaic power of a lost American myth. In the late 1930s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family's ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he begins an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat-lightning—a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there." An essential novel by any measure, The Crossing is luminous and appalling, a book that touches, stops, and starts the heart and mind at once. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.
