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| Books |
Across the Wire: Life an Hard Times on the Mexican Border
by Luis Alberto Urrea
A compelling and unprecedented look at what life is like for those refugees living on the Mexican side of the order-a world that is only some twenty miles from San Diego, but that few have ever seen. Urrea's account of the struggle of these people to survive amid abject poverty, unsanitary living conditions, and the legal and political chaos that reign in the Mexican borderlands explain without a doubt the reason so may are forced to make the dangerous and illegal journey "across the wire" into the United States.
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By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border
by Luis Alberto Urrea
Explores the post-NAFTA and Proposition 187 border purgatory of garbage pickers and dump dwellers, gawking tourists and relief workers, fearsome coyotes and their desperate clientele. In sixteen indelible portraits, Urrea
illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped
between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States-and ignored by both.
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The Devil's Highway: A True Story
by Luis Alberto Urrea
In this work ?one of the most widely praised pieces of investigative reporting ?we follow twenty-six men who in May 2001 attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, thorough the deadly region known as the Deveil's Highway, a desert so harsh and desolate that even th Border Patrol is fraid to travel through it. Only twelve of hte men made it out.
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Hard Line: Life and Death on the U.S.-Mexico Border
by Ken Ellingwood
Ken Ellingwood, correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, captures the heart of this complex land, through the dramatic stories of undocumented immigrants and the border agents who track them through the desert . . . this is a vivid portrait of a place and its people, and a moving story of the West that has major implication for the nation as a whole.
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Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration
by Douglas S. Massey
Most popular discussions of contemporary U.S. immigration ignore history and the "facts on the ground." Massey lays out the history of Mexico-U.S. migration. He provides convincing evidence that stepped-up border enforcement efforts since the early 1990s have been both deadly and counterproductive. He argues forcefully for an immigration policy that takes the realities of U.S.-Mexican social and economic integration into account. Readers who are convinced that immigration is a bad thing in itself will not be persuaded by Massey to change their minds; those who are interested in a dispassionate discussion of border control issues will find this book provocative and useful. (Summary provided by Michael Lichter)
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Caramelo
by Sandra Cisneros
A remarkable folk-saga of Mexican migrants told by a curious little girl who has the wisdom of an old grandma. Beginning on Highway 66, it's a salsified variant on the Joad family's odyssey, zigzagging from Chicago to Mexico City and back. It's all about la vida, the life of "honorable labor." It's a beautiful tale of all migrants caught between here and there.
(Summary provided by Studs Terkel)
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The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
by Francisco Jimenez
The twelves related stories relate the autobiographical experiences of Santa Clara professor Jimenez who grew up in a family of migrant farmworkers
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Crossing the Border: Research from the Mexican Migration Project
by Jorge Durand and
Douglas S. Massey, eds.
Editors Durand and Massey bring the clarity of scientific analysis to this hotly contested but under-researched topic. Leading immigration scholars use data from the Mexican Migration Project-the largest, most comprehensive, and reliable source of data on Mexican immigrants currently available-to answer such important questions as: who are the people that migrate to the United States from Mexico? Why do they come? How effective is U.S. migration policy in meeting its objectives?
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Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail
by Ruben Martinez
The U.S.-Mexico border is one of the most permeable boundaries in the world, breached daily by Mexicans in search of work. Thousands die crossing the lin and those who reach "the other side" are branded illegals; they are undocumented and unprotected. Crossing Over follows the exodus of the Chavez clan, that had already lost three sons in a tragic border accident, from their small southern Mexican town to the United States.
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Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation
by
John Phillip Santos
An immigration tale and a haunting family story, Santos brings to life a pageant of family figures as he searches for answers to the mystery surrounding his grandfather's suicide. Santos weaves together Mexican mythology and the history of Texas to create the story of how the soul of one Mexican family was passed down, and sometimes nearly lost, across borders and decades, into the present.
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Rain of Gold and Thirteen Senses
by Victor Villsenor
The story of three generations of the author's family's migration from revolutionary Mexico to California. The books recount his grandparents difficult border crossing and arrival in California through his own triumph over cultural barriers.
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Under the Feet of Jesus
by Helen Maria Viramontes
The beauty of the California landscape is juxtaposed with the
bleakness of poverty in this novel that tells the story
of.Estrella抯 mother who has survived abandonment in a land
that treats her as if she were invisible, even though she and
her children pick the crops of the farms that feed its people.
But within Estrella, seeds of growth and change are stirring.
Pushed to the margins of society, she learns to fight back.
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Puerto Rican Immigration
When I Was Puerto Rican
by Esmeralda Santiago
The oldest of eleven children, Santiago began life in a zinc shack in rural Puerto Rico. At the age of thirteen, she left with her mother who set off for New York with dreams of a better life. In a decaying Brooklyn tenement, the family struggles to survive in the face of harsh challenges.
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Chinese Immigration
China Men
by Maxine Hong Kingston
Woven from memory, myth and fact ?a journey into the hearts and minds of Chinese men in America: the grandfather who slaved in the Sierra Nevadas on the transcontinental railroad . . .the father who danced down Fifth Avenue on days off from the laundry . . . and the son who returned to China to find release from his dead mother's
angry spirit. Here is a remarkable tale of what they endured in a strange new land.
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Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
by Maxine Hong Kinston
Kingston grew up in two worlds. There was "solid America," the place her parents emigrated to, and the China of her mother's "talk-stories." In talk-stories women were warriors and her mother was still a doctor in China who could cure the sick and scare away ghosts, not a harried and frustrated woman running a stifling laundromat in California. But what is story and what is truth? In China, a ghost is a supernatural being; in America it is anyone who is not Chinese. In addition, underlying even the most exciting talk-stories of Chinese women warriors is the real oppression of Chinese women. In an attempt to figure out her world, Kingston finds herself creating stories of her own, filling in the blanks her mother has not told her because her daughter is, after all, not true Chinese and thus cannot be completely trusted. The new stories refuse to fall into traditional forms, and the realizations that come from them often bring out a beautiful, passionate anger that practically burns through the pages. (Summary by Eric Bauermeister)
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The Power of Love
by Amalia
Molina
Imagine this nightmare scenario: On a beautiful
day in Southern California, you have just dropped off your
children at school. On your return, just a block from your
home, a police car approaches and flashes its lights for you
to stop. When you do, an officer handcuffs you and drives back
to your home, where six armed men from other cars enter the
house. There, "they burst into the bedroom, arrested my
husband, searched everything, and confiscated his passport" as
well as hers. These words of Ana Amalia Guzman Molina reflect
not just her own experience.
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I Rigoberta Menchu
by
Rigoberta Menchu, Elisabeth Burgos-Debray, and Ann
Wright
Interviews with a Guatemalan national leader
discuss her country's political situation and the resulting
violence, which has claimed the lives of her brother, mother,
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Bitter Fruit
by Achmat
Dangor
Bitter Fruit tells the story of Silas and Lydia
Ali, both of mixed race ancestry, and their son Mikey, a
promising university student in post-apartheid South Africa.
Silas was an ANC activist and now a lawyer working with the
Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He unexpectedly
encounters Francois du Boise, a white policeman who had raped
Lydia 20 years earlier while Silas was being beaten in the
back of a police van. Even though he doesn't confront du
Boise, the encounter reopens old wounds and creates new ones
as Mikey learns of his real heritage. Even in the
post-apartheid world they longed for, they find their
happiness hard to achieve when the past never really goes
away. Achmat Dangor's novel has received positive reviews and
is a Booker Prize nominee. The Telegraph says, "Dangor's vivid
prose, narrative fluency and facility for literary experiment
make Bitter Fruit a considerable achievement." |
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| Movies/Films |
Dying to Live: A Migrant's Journey
by Groody River Films, University of Notre Dame (33 minutes)
A profound look at the human face of the migrant, the film explores who these people are, why they leave their homes and what they face in their journey. The film explores the places of conflict, pain and hope along the U.S.-Mexico border. It is a reflection on the human struggle for a more dignified life and the search to find God in the midst of it all.
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Endless Exodus: The Sorrowful Flight of the Migrants
by San Damiano Foundation (130 minutes)
A film about migrants from Mexico and Central America who cross the border and enter the U.S. without any documentation. It looks at the problem through the lens of spirituality and captures the face and presence of Christ in the face and presence of the migrants, many of whom will die trying to cross the desert to get a job nobody really wants.
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The Gatekeeper
Gatekeeper Productions (102 minutes)
A true-to-life drama based on DEA and U.S. Border Patrol reports as well as countless firsthand accounts of hopeful migrant struggles. The film depicts the current civil unrest occurring at the U.S.-Mexican border. Adam Fields, a U.S. Border Patrol Agent, is vigilant about keeping the flood of undocumented immigrants at bay. He indulges his racist beliefs by moonlighting with an extreme right wing organization and decides to go undercover to expose and publicize the criminal nature of Mexicans illegally pursuing freedom in America. His plan goes terribly wrong.
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The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon
Gatekeeper Productions (73 minutes)
John Carlos Frey spent a year filming the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in clandestine shacks and shantytowns within eyesight of multi-million dollar mansions in San Diego.
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The Invisible Chapel (follow-up to The Invisible Mexicans of Deer Canyon)
by Gatekeeper Productions (31 minutes)
For over twenty years a migrant chapel remained invisible to the wealthy residents of a San Diego neighborhood. Parish volunteers provided humanitarian assistance and weekly services. The film follows the conflict that ensues between the migrants and the local population who wants the chapel dismantled.
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Posada
by Loyola Productions (57 minutes)
The U.S. Border Patrol turns away 100,000 unaccompanied immigrant children every year. The film follows the challenges faced by three youth trying to navigate the legal system in their attempts to stay in the U.S.
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Maria Full of Grace
by Joshua Marston (101 minutes)
Maria Full of Grace is one young woman's
journey from a small Colombian town to the streets of New
York. A bright, spirited 17-year old, Maria Alvarez lives with
three generations of her family in a cramped house in rural
Colombia and works stripping thorns from flowers in a rose
plantation. The offer of lucrative job involving travel
- in fact, becoming a drug "mule" - changes the course of her
life.
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El Norte
by Gregory
Nava (139 minutes)
Mayan Indian peasants, tired
of being thought of as nothing more than "brazos fuertes"
("strong arms", i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an
effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the
Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and
family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely
escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to "El Norte"
("the North", i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help
from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on
strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way
by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try
to make a new life as young, uneducated, and illegal immigrant.
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A Day without a
Mexican
by Sergio Arau
(100 minutes)
California is
in shock. The economic, political and social implications of
this disaster threaten the Golden State’s way of life. We
delve into the lives of four characters: Mary Jo Quintana,
teacher and housewife; Senator Abercrombie, suddenly upgraded
to Governor; Louis Mcclaire, ranch owner and agribusiness
representative; and Lila Rodriguez, reporter and apparently
the only Latina left behind. For all of them, “the
disappearance” forces the cracks in their private lives wide
open.
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Bread and Roses
by Ken Loach (110 minutes)
Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican
border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her
older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a
non-union janitorial service has the contract, the
foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the
service-workers' union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro to
bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Sam
finds Maya a willing listener, she's also attracted to him.
Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The
workers try for public support; management intimidates workers
to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and
management may be set to collide.
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Organizations/Websites |
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Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los
Angeles
http://www.chirla.org
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Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee
Rights
http://icirr.org
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Justice for Immigrants
http://justiceforimmigrants.org
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Center for Community Change
http://208.109.62.149/
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Stop Trafficking
http://homepage.mac.com/srjeanschafersds/stoptraffic/index.html
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Catholic Legal Immigration Network-CLINIC
http://www.cliniclegal.org
Mission: To enhance and expand delivery of legal services to
indigent and low-income immigrants principally through
diocesan immigration programs.
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New Sanctuary Movement
http://www.newsanctuarymovement.org
A coalition of interfaith religious leaders
and participating congregations, called by faith to respond
actively and publicly to the suffering of our immigrant
brothers and sisters residing in the United States.
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| Articles and Other Resources |
Mahony is correct on immigration
by The National Catholic Reporter |
White Privilege: Unpacking the
Invisible Knapsack
by Peggy McIntosh |
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A Global Trek to Poor Nations, From Poorer Ones
by Jason
DeParle, The New York Times
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The Story of Two Immigrants
by The New York Times
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Developing immigrant power through citizenship
by PICO National
Network
The story of how some of LA Voice's
sister organizations in PICO have
been able to replicate the PICO's
Citizenship and Civic Participation Campaign
in
the Bay Area.
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Migration And Catholic Social Thought: Crossing Boarders Between
Scholarship And Activism
by Dr. Lois Ann Lorentzen, Department of Theology and
Religious Studies, University of San Francisco
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| Advocacy
and Legislative Resources |
Voting the Common Good...Election 2008, Center of Concern
Resources for a Common Good Framework, including resources for understanding the Immigration debate in light of the 2008 elections www.coc.org |
A 700-mile Wall
Justice on the Border
by Education for Justice |
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BorderLinks Reading Packet
by BorderLinks Staff |
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Immigration Nation
by Tamar Jacoby
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Network Social Justice Lobby
http://www.networklobby.org
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Jesuit Advocates
http://capwiz.com/jesuit/home
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Catholic Relief Services Advocacy Page
http://actioncenter.crs.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ac_homepage |
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National Immigration Forum
http://www.immigrationforum.org
Mission: to uphold America's tradition as a nation of
immigrants. The Forum advocates and builds public support for
public policies that welcome immigrants and refugees and are
fait to and supportive of newcomers to our country.
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Coalition for Comprehensive
Immigration Reform
http://www.cirnow.org
A broad coalition of immigrant,
faith-based, and labor organizations working on national
legislation.
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| Student Work |
Students Stopping the Trafficking of People
Students Stopping the Trafficking of People (SSTOP) -- is a
student
organization at Georgetown University and was founded in April
2004 by a
small group of young women who were empowered to do something
about the
issue of human trafficking.
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Not For Sale,
University of San Francisco Students fighting human
trafficking |
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Links/Resources
