An intense, intimate and first-of-its-kind look at the world of human smuggling in Latin America, by a MacArthur genius grant winner and anthropologist with unprecedented access

Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers--or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services--are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognized anthropologist and expert Jason De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years.

The result of this unique and extraordinary access is SOLDIERS AND KINGS: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De León expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. SOLDIERS AND KINGS is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction.

On June 27, 2011, a deadly chemical accident took place inside the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas, where the company is headquartered. The company urged everyone return to work, although the spill left their employees injured, sick, and terrified. Over the years, Arkansas-based reporter Alice Driver was able to gain the trust of the immigrant workers who survived the accident. They rewarded her persistence by giving her total access to their lives.

During the course of Alice's reporting, the COVID-19 pandemic struck the community, and the workers were forced to continue production in unsafe conditions, watching their colleagues get sick and die one by one. These essential workers, many of whom only speak Spanish and some of whom are illiterate--all of whom suffer the health consequences of Tyson's negligence--somehow found the strength and courage to organize and fight back, culminating in a lawsuit against Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking company in America.

A richly detailed, fiercely honest, and deeply reported tour de force (Publishers Weekly, starred review), Life and Death of the American Worker will forever change the way we think about the people who prepare our food.

An unflinching memoir and invaluable resource (Kirkus) about navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina--offering both a riveting personal story and an examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer.

Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member's girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She's ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She's been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you're a First and Only. It also comes at a price.

With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Foregoing the tidy bullet points of her resume and instead shining a light on the spaces between them, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. In this timely and revealing reflection, Alejandra draws from her own experiences to name and frame the challenges First and Onlys often face, illuminating a road to truth, healing, and change in the process.

Part memoir, part manifesto, FIRST GEN is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging--a gripping journey to reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive.

Growing up in Yakima, Washington, Noé Álvarez never knew his grandfather. Stories swirled around this mythologized, larger-than-life figure: That he had abandoned his family, and had possibly done something awful that put a curse on his descendants. About his grandfather, young Noé was sure of only one thing: That he had played the accordion. Now an adult, reckoning with the legacy of silence surrounding his family's migration from Mexico, Álvarez resolves both to take up the instrument and to journey into Mexico to discover the grandfather he never knew.

Álvarez travels across the US with his accordion, meeting makers and players in cities that range from San Antonio to Boston. He uncovers the story of an instrument that's been central to classic American genres, but also played a critical role in indigenous Mexican history. Like the accordion itself, Álvarez feels trapped between his roots in Mexico and the U.S. As he tries to make sense of his place in the world--as a father, a son, a musician--he gets closer to uncovering the mystery of his origins.

A MacArthur Genius shares her inspiring story, from undocumented newcomer to leader in a powerful immigrant youth movement.

Dreaming of Home is a coming-of-age story both for a young woman finding her true self and for a social movement of immigrant youth trailblazers who inspired the world and changed the lives of millions.

Cristina Jiménez's family fights to stay afloat as Ecuador falls into a political and economic crisis. When she is thirteen, her parents courageously decide to seek a better life in the U.S., landing in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens, New York. There are many challenges, but eventually, Cristina discovers she is not alone; she finds her calling within a community of social justice organizers. With deep candor and humor, Cristina opens the door to what it's like to grow up undocumented and the reality that being a good immigrant doesn't shield you from systematic racism, danger, or even the confusion of falling in love.

Through personal stories and historical truth telling, Cristina invites us to acknowledge the America that never was and to imagine the America that could be when everyday people build power and fight for change. And she reminds us that home is more than a physical place on the map, offering each of us a roadmap for finding the home within even when the world around us seems to be crumbling.

Have you ever wondered how it would be to work with your family in a Mexican restaurant? Abuelita, I Am Your Grandson will show you. It is a collection of autobiographical stories that hit every note on the scale, ranging from Mexican gastronomy, to business, to lessons in language and culture. Without further ado, grab an apron and wrap up. Come back behind the counter, where the planchero will draw a laugh, where the onions will make you cry, and where the Tequila will have you speaking Spanish by the end.

The last biography of Pancho Villa was published 25 years ago, and this new edition has been translated into English for the first time. This biography marks a kind of reinvention of the legendary Mexican figure of Pancho Villa. It is a masterful reevaluation and heavily researched account of his life. This book makes a new claim, finally giving Pancho Villa his due as the decisive figure in the success of Mexican Revolution. Here he is less the colorful bandito and more the incorruptible conscience that not only won key battles, but also maintained the revolutionary vision and led the way in terms of class consciousness.

Pancho Villa is a rollicking, sometimes hilariously comical, sometimes extremely violent, and always very personal portrait of the controversial Mexican historical figure Pancho Villa. Beloved crime writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II (a.k.a. PIT)--the prolific historian, biographer of Che Guevara and the founder of Mexican neopolicial fiction--brings his tremendous storytelling skills to an account of one of the Mexico's greatest legendary characters.

With his vibrant narrative style, Taibo describes the adventures of Pancho Villa with incredible stories, the stuff of history and tragedy, backed up by tremendous research. Throughout, Taibo unveils secrets about the life of one of Mexico's most courageous and charismatic leaders. Includes period photographs that indelibly capture the rocky transition from the wild and agrarian past towards modern statehood.

An unflinching memoir and invaluable resource (Kirkus) about navigating social mobility as a first gen Latina--offering both a riveting personal story and an examination of the unacknowledged emotional tolls of being a trailblazer.

Alejandra Campoverdi has been a child on welfare, a White House aide to President Obama, a Harvard graduate, a gang member's girlfriend, and a candidate for U.S. Congress. She's ridden on Air Force One and in G-rides. She's been featured in Maxim magazine and had a double mastectomy. Living a life of contradictory extremes often comes with the territory when you're a First and Only. It also comes at a price.

With candor and heart, Alejandra retraces her trajectory as a Mexican American woman raised by an immigrant single mother in Los Angeles. Foregoing the tidy bullet points of her resume and instead shining a light on the spaces between them, what emerges is a powerful testimony that shatters the one-dimensional glossy narrative we are often sold of what it takes to achieve the American Dream. In this timely and revealing reflection, Alejandra draws from her own experiences to name and frame the challenges First and Onlys often face, illuminating a road to truth, healing, and change in the process.

Part memoir, part manifesto, FIRST GEN is a story of generational inheritance, aspiration, and the true meaning of belonging--a gripping journey to reclaim the parts of ourselves we sacrificed in order to survive.

From the founder of Los Cenzontles Cultural Arts Academy, a profoundly personal exploration of music's power to build cultural bridges that last.

I wish I had studied with Eugene Rodrigeuz when I was growing up. Read this beautifully written book about culture, identity and resilience, and you will know why. --Linda Ronstadt

NPR Books We Love 2024: [Rodriguez's] commitment to his community and his exploration of growing up bicultural are both inspiring.

From an early age Eugene Rodriguez knew he was captivated by music. But he found himself encountering the same two problems again and again: the chilly rigidity of so much formal music education, and the underrepresentation of Mexican culture in American media. In 1989 he founded Los Cenzontles (The Mockingbirds), a group that offered music education to Bay Area youth, and that gave pride of place to Mexican musical traditions.

Bird of Four Hundred Voices follows Rodriguez as he leads his young students from a California barrio to uncover their ancestral roots. From their home community in San Pablo, Los Cenzontles journey to fandangos in Veracruz, resurrect a lost mariachi tradition, and collaborate with luminaries like Linda Ronstadt, Lalo Guerrero, Taj Mahal, Jackson Browne, Flaco Jiménez, and Los Lobos. Rodriguez's story offers an honest, deeply personal look at the cultural work that confronts historical oppression and joyously challenges cultural borders. And it is a profound celebration of the powerful influence of Mexico's musical heritage on American culture.

A New York Times Editor's Pick
A People Magazine Best Book to Read in February
A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of 2024

My Side of the River is both fierce and poetic. It brilliantly reframes border writing while embracing nature and familial history. There are moments one sees greatness appear. This is one of those moments. ―Luis Alberto Urrea, New York Times bestselling author of Good Night, Irene

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez reveals her experience as the U.S. born daughter of immigrants and what happened when, at fifteen, her parents were forced back to Mexico in this captivating and tender memoir.

Born to Mexican immigrants south of the Rillito River in Tucson, Arizona, Elizabeth had the world at her fingertips. She was preparing to enter her freshman year of high school as the number one student when suddenly, her own country took away the most important right a child has: the right to have a family.

When her parents' visas expired and they were forced to return to Mexico, Elizabeth was left responsible for her younger brother, as well as her education. Determined to break the cycle of being a statistic, she knew that even though her parents couldn't stay, there was no way she could let go of the opportunities the U.S. could provide. Armed with only her passport and sheer teenage determination, Elizabeth became what her school would eventually describe as an unaccompanied homeless youth, one of thousands of underage victims affected by family separation due to broken immigration laws.

For fans of Educated by Tara Westover and The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande, My Side of the River explores separation, generational trauma, and the toll of the American dream. It's also, at its core, a love story between a brother and a sister who, no matter the cost, is determined to make the pursuit of her brother's dreams easier than it was for her.

From America's illustrator in chief (Fast Company), a stunning graphic memoir of a childhood in Cuba, coming to America on the Mariel boatlift, and a defense of democracy, here and there

Hailed for his iconic art on the cover of Time and on jumbotrons around the world, Edel Rodriguez is among the most prominent political artists of our age. Now for the first time, he draws his own life, revisiting his childhood in Cuba and his family's passage on the infamous Mariel boatlift.

When Edel was nine, Fidel Castro announced his surprising decision to let 125,000 traitors of the revolution, or worms, leave the country. The faltering economy and Edel's family's vocal discomfort with government surveillance had made their daily lives on a farm outside Havana precarious, and they secretly planned to leave. But before that happened, a dozen soldiers confiscated their home and property and imprisoned them in a detention center near the port of Mariel, where they were held with dissidents and criminals before being marched to a flotilla that miraculously deposited them, overnight, in Florida.

Through vivid, stirring art, Worm tells a story of a boyhood in the midst of the Cold War, a family's displacement in exile, and their tenacious longing for those they left behind. It also recounts the coming-of-age of an artist and activist, who, witnessing American's turn from democracy to extremism, struggles to differentiate his adoptive country from the dictatorship he fled. Confronting questions of patriotism and the liminal nature of belonging, Edel Rodriguez ultimately celebrates the immigrants, maligned and overlooked, who guard and invigorate American freedom.

Through the years, friends and loved ones have always told Carol she should write a book based on her amazing life and its surprising turns. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus: the Amazing Life Journey of a Jewish Girl Who Came to Know Jesus the Messiah, is finally available for all to read! It is the moving account of Carol Holesak's life story. Carol could not have envisioned, as a young Jewish girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York, where life would take her, the hardships she would face, but also the triumphs as she comes to know Jesus the Messiah and experiences the changing power of God's love. By sharing her story, Carol seeks to encourage and motivate readers to not give up and keep moving forward.

With this real and honest portrayal, you will see how a young Jewish girl with her trials and challenges grows into a woman who loves the Lord. As you read her engaging story, you will laugh, and you will cry! Through her words, follow along as Carol reflects on her life journey starting in New York, where she experiences unbearable loss; to Florida, where she meets Jesus and is transformed; then accompany Carol on her journey to San Diego, California, where she shares some fun and funny adventures while attending the School of Evangelism. It is here with God's guidance that she discovers her gifts for ministry for helping women who are struggling with life's challenges. Carol's hope is that the words in this book will be a source of comfort, hope, and joy to those who read them.

As the founder of Changing Point for Abundant Life and A Deep Change ministries, Carol has been able to reach hundreds of women with the message of God's love and healing.

A PEOPLE magazine pick, Best Books Fall 2023: A breathtaking memoir about surviving a horrifying childhood; Means...transforms memories...into a work of art.

Starred review from Kirkus: This book is an outstanding debut...A harrowing and soulful memoir to be read, savored, and reread.

Brittany Means has pieced together the shards of a devastating childhood in this powerful memoir. It's gut-wrenching but at the same time triumphant, harrowing yet exquisitely told. Hell If We Don't Change Our Ways is a story of survival that left me choked up and cheering.
-Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle

The book's lasting impact might be what it demands of the memoir genre. Brittany Means has, at once, created the most readable and the most psychologically rigorous book I've read in decades. I needed the reminder that art can do this.
-Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

I can't write a story about myself as the sad, quiet child of two drug addicts. That's not how it was, even when it was. To me, sleeping in the car was normal. Better, it was comfy and fun. I loved my bed made of clothes inside a trash bag that I sank into slowly like Uncle Fester from the Addams Family movie. . . . I loved the motels and their swimming pools and trashy daytime TV channels. . . . Nobody could tell us what to do.

Brittany Means's childhood was a blur of highways and traumas that collapsed any effort to track time. Riding shotgun as her mother struggled to escape abusive relationships, Brittany didn't care where they were going--to a roadside midwestern motel, a shelter, or The Barn in Indiana, the cluttered mansion her Pentecostal grandparents called home--as long as they were together. But every so often, her mom would surprise her--and leave.

As Brittany grew older and questioned her own complicated relationships and the poverty, abuse, and instability that enveloped her, she began to recognize that hell wasn't only the place she read about in the Bible; it was the cycle of violence that entrapped her family. Through footholds such as horror movies, neuropsychology, and strong bonds, Brittany makes sense of this cycle and finds a way to leave it.

While untangling the web of her most painful memories, Brittany crafts a tale of self-preservation, resilience, and hope with a unique narrative style--a sparkling example of the human ability to withstand the most horrific experiences and still thrive.

Growing up, Rafa's parents didn't want him to feel different because, as his mom told him: Dreams should not have borders. But when he tried to get his driver's license during his junior year of high school, his parents were forced to reveal his immigration status. Suddenly, the kid who modeled his entire high school career after American TV shows had no idea what to do -- there was no episode of Saved by the Bell where Zack gets deported! While his parents were relieved to no longer live a lie in front of their son, Rafa found himself completely unraveling in the face of his uncertain future.

Illegally Yours is a heartwarming, comical look at how this struggling Ecuadorian immigrant family bonded together to navigate Rafa's school life, his parents' work lives, and their shared secret life as undocumented Americans, determined to make the best of their always turbulent and sometimes dangerous American existence. From using the Ricky Martin/Jennifer Lopez Latin Explosion to his social advantage in the '90s to how his parents--doctors in their home country of Ecuador--were reduced to working menial jobs in the US, the family's secret became their struggle, and their struggle became their hustle. An alternatingly hilarious and touching exploration of belonging and identity, Illegally Yours revolves around one very simple question: What does it mean to be American?

Patricia Alarcón Missler finds her roots in a tasty world of chocolate éclairs, platefuls of nachos enjoyed on dates, and tamales nibbled on after Christmas Eve mass. More importantly she discovers that familia is at the heart of everything in her proud Mexican American life.

And that's what she shares in Border Town Chica, A Memoir. Missler paints colorful interconnected stories portraying a young girl growing up in the small south Texas border town of Brownsville. Readers see the author as a six-year-old picking out a special pastry, and as a young woman picking out a special boyfriend, and go along for the camaraderie and adventures shared with familia and friends.

Summers spent across the border at Tía Loli's. A trip to the racetrack with Papi. Bandidos on the road. Two sisters on their own in Mexico City. Don't look back, we're being followed... Standing atop the Teotihuacán Pyramids. Fortunetellers in a cave bar. The college daze in Austin and more...

Readers from diverse backgrounds will relate to these poignant stories, which transcend cultures and reach deep into the core of us all. Inspiring, humorous, and insightful-at times intimately personal-Border Town Chica, A Memoir, breaks from the stereotype of the Mexican American experience.

A veteran of New York and national politics, Luis Miranda embodies the relentless spirit of progress of American immigrants.

There is no one on the Latino, New York, and national political scene with the breadth of experience, passion, and storytelling charm of Luis Miranda. In Relentless, he shares a fascinating narrative of his life and career--from his early days as a radically minded Puerto Rican activist to his decades of political advice and problem-solving.

Miranda recounts the thrill of the ascendency of Hamilton, created by his son Lin-Manuel, and he details the suffering after the devastation of Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Amid the triumphs and challenges, Miranda examines what his experience reveals about our ever-changing politics, demographics, and society.

Weaving together history, culture, and Mexican food traditions, Melani Martinez shares the story of her family's life and work in the heart of their downtown eatery, El Rapido. Opened by Martinez's great-grandfather, Aurelio Perez, in 1933, El Rapido served tamales and burritos to residents and visitors to Tucson's historic Barrio Presidio for nearly seventy years. For the family, the factory that bound them together was known for the giant corn grinder churning behind the scenes--the molino. With clear eyes and warm humor, Martinez documents the work required to prepare food for others, and explores the heartbreaking aftermath of gentrification that forces the multigenerational family business to close its doors.

The Molino is also Martinez's personal story--that of a young Tucsonense coming of age in the 1980s and '90s. As a young woman she rejects the work in her father's popular kitchen, but when the business closes, her world shifts and the family disbands. When she finds her way back home, the tortillería's iconic mural provides a gateway into history and ruin, ancestry and sacrifice, industrial myth and artistic incarnation--revealing a sacred presence still alive in Tucson.

A must-read for foodies, history lovers, and anyone searching for spiritual truth in the desert, this is a story of belonging and transformation in the borderlands.

Hip-hop artist, documentary producer, and president of the largest independent record label in the country, J. Diggs brings America the tale of two conspiracies. Survivor of eight different federal penitentiaries in ten years, a man who was convicted for conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, BET's youngest American Gangsta, Diggs gives you the raw and uncut tales of hustling in the '80s, vivid accounts of bank robberies, prison stories, and the struggles of returning to his hood, the notorious Crest, located in California's Bay Area.

With the riveting stories that tell of ups, downs, years of fighting to rebuild his life after prison, the loss of his friend and hip-hop icon MacDre, and the ongoing battle to keep his freedom, Soul of a Gangsta reads more like fiction.

Soul of a Gangsta allows you a glimpse into the life of J. Diggs, the artist, the producer, the entrepreneur, the survivor, and the family man. Walk through the streets of crack dealing, murder, armed bank robberies, prison, riots, shoot-outs, and prostitutes--a past that will finally be revealed to the world through this autobiography, which tells the story of two worlds and a young Black man's fight to rebuild his life.

Early in Brooke Champagne's childhood, her Ecuadorian grandmother Lala (half bruja, half santa) strictly circumscribed the girl's present and future: become beautiful but know precisely when to use it; rationalize in English but love in God's first language, the superior Spanish; and if you must write, Dios help you, at least make a subject of me. Champagne's betrayal of these confounding dictates began before they were even spoken, and she soon started both writing and hiding the truth about whom she was becoming.

The hilarious, heartbreaking essays in this collection trace the evolutions of this girlhood of competing languages, ethnicities, aesthetics, politics, and class constraints against the backdrop of a boozy New Orleans upbringing. In these essays, Champagne and members of her family love poorly and hate well, whip and get whipped, pray and curse in two languages, steal from The Man and give to themselves, kiss where it hurts, poke where it hurts worse, and keep and spill each other's secrets--first face-to-face, then on the page. They believe and doubt and reckon with the stories they tell about themselves and where they come from, finally becoming most human, most alive, in their connections to one another.

This beautifully open coming-of-age memoir by a Mexican American debut writer doubles as a love letter to the tough grandmother who raised her.

When I tell people who don't speak Spanish what prieta means--dark or the dark one--their eyes pop open and a small gasp escapes... How do I tell them that now, even after the cruelty of children, Prieta means love? That each time Prieta fell from my grandmother's lips, I learned to love my dark skin.

No one calls me that anymore. I miss how her words sounded out loud.

My Ita called me Prieta. When she died, she took the name with her.

Anchored by the tough grandmother who taught her how to stand firm and throw a punch, debut author Yasmín Ramírez writes about the punches life has thrown at her non-traditional family of tough Mexican American women.

Having spent years of her twenties feeling lost--working an intensely taxing retail job and turning to bars for comfort--the blow of her grandmother's death pushes Yasmín to unravel. So she comes home to El Paso, Texas, where people know how to spell her accented name and her mother helps her figure out what to do with her life. Once she finally starts pursuing her passion for writing, Yasmín processes her grief by telling the story of her Ita, a resilient matriarch who was far from the stereotypical domestic abuelita. Yasmín remembers watching boxing matches at a dive bar with her grandmother, Ita wistfully singing old Mexican classics, her mastectomy scar, and of course, her lesson on how to properly ball your fist for a good punch. Interviewing her mom and older sister, Yasmín learns even more about why her Ita was so tough--the abusive men, the toil of almostliterally back-breaking jobs, and the guilt of abortions that went against her culture.

Expertly blending the lyrical prose of a gifted author with the down-to-earthtone of a close friend, this debut memoir marks Ramírez as a talented new author to watch. Her honesty in self-reflection, especially about periods where she felt directionless, and her vivid depictions of a mother and grandmother who persevered through hard knocks, offers vulnerable solidarity to readers who've had hard knocks of their own.