Women’s History and Social Studies Methods Class Converge with Marjorie Agosin

The prolific Marjorie Agosin in a reflective moment.

Ever since her departure to the United States from her native Chile in 1972, shortly before the CIA-sponsored coup that toppled Socialist PresidentSalvador Allende, Majorie Agosin has been writing. 

A lot.

I will write at another point about individual books that this prolific, empathic, socially engaged and generous writer and family friend has produced.

For today, though, I want to talk about her both as an author for Women’s History Month and as someone whose work could be useful to the Urban Teacher Education Program students in my Social Studies Methods classes.

A professor and former department chair of Spanish literature at Wellesley College, Agosin has shown remarkable versatility in the nearly 30 years since she earned her doctorate from Indiana University.  While much of her early work took the form of traditional literary analyses-one of her first books discussed the work of fabled Chilean poet Pablo Neruda-she since has branched out to produce many different types of books. 

Readers who care to can take in a collection of letters between Agosin and childhood friend Emma Sepulveda, an account of her global travels, or more historical recordings of conversations with the mothers who protested their loved ones’ murder at Buenos Aires’ Plaza de Mayo during Argentina’s Dirty War.

Through each of these forms,  and the material about which she writes, Agosin makes statements about what constitutes legitimate forms of self-expression and subjects for scholarly inquiry.

Then there is the poetry.

Above all, Agosin considers herself a poet. Despite being fluent in English and participating actively in the translation of her work, she always writes in Spanish because, she says, that is the language that is closest to her soul. 

Through a profile I wrote about Agosin for Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, I learned that she has several translators with whom she works regularly and does on occasion change how she expresses something in Spanish after talking through the English translation.

A Chilean Jew whose family’s roots are in Eastern Europe, she taps deep into the many veins of her identity. At different points she writes about being Chilean, about being a woman and a mother, about being Jewish, about the experience of exile, and about her family’s origins.  She repeatedly links her experience to those of past generations-one collection is focused on diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank, while another pays homage to Auschwitz survivor Zezette Larsen. 

Agosin collaborates actively with visual artists, so many of her books combine her work with that of painters like in the work Secrets in the Sand: The Young Women of Juarez.  In this book Agosin bears witness to the more than 350 women who had been murdered on this border town in Mexico and the consuming grief with which their families must live daily. 

Agosin’s moral vision anchors her work.  She has consistently shown her passionate commitment to human rights-a passion that has been manifested both through the anthologies she has edited and in her work with the arpilleristas she has known in Chile.

The arpilleristas are Chilean women whose sons, husbands, brothers and uncles were “disappeared” during the Pinochet era that followed the 1973 coup. Forbidden by law to speak and protest against these crimes, these women wove their experiences into heart rending tapestries.

As a young woman, Agosin smuggled many of these pieces of art and protest out of the country. She wrote about the women and their work in a number of books.

Facing History and Ourselves, where my wife Dunreith works, has published a study guide authored primarily by Dani Eshet that helps students and teachers think about how to understand the work and transfer the process to where they live.

Agosin has also shown generosity to other artists throughout her career, editing collections of emerging writers so as to give them venues for their work and publications for their resumes.

Having written close to 100 books, Agosin has given interested readers plenty of material from which to draw.  I have read about a dozen of her books and recommend only that you start somewhere.  The chances are high that your first book by this talented and dedicated woman will not be your last.

Dany Fleming weighs in on history’s vitality.

Here’s an insightful comment about history’s vitality from Dany Fleming.  He wrote it in response to yesterday’s post about John Hope Franklin’s The Emancipation Proclamation.

Dany Fleming // March 30, 2009 at 1:58 pm (edit)

I look forward to reading some of Franklin’s thoughts. It’s fascinating to see how Lincoln’s ideas and actions are diced and sliced and then put into new contexts to serve the purpose at hand. As you would imagine, where I am in Virginia, the loudest arguments here are that Lincoln’s efforts to “appease” the South were more about his true feelings than about political expediency or his efforts to unite.

He’s still a villain in many corners around here. The Lincoln family cemetery is just outside of Harrisonburg – where his father was born. Until recently, it was in complete disrepair. That it even existed was news to me until recently. However, maintaining every Civil War battle ground is huge and serious business here.

This small, local struggle over a cemetery and battle grounds from a war 150 years ago certainly provides some insight into the complexity of conflicts around the globe.

End of Women’s History Month, Helen Zia’s Asian American Dreams.

Helen Zia's fine book about Asian Americans blends personal and community history.

Women’s History Month is almost over.

 While I’ve written about the works of fine women authors like Christina Lamb, Sonia Nazario, Samantha Power and Ida Tarbell, I want to am making sure to focus today and tomorrow on two female writers.  

Journalist Helen Zia is today’s author. 

While she has co-authored a book with falsely accused scientist Wen Ho Lee, I am writing about her wide ranging, informative and intensely personal work, Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People.

Asian American Dreams covers a lot of ground.

Zia opens the book by writing about her childhood experiences in New Jersey as the daughter of Chinese immigrants, with all the attendant familial pressures and external lack of understanding that many other Asian American children experience.  She continues the personal strand of the book by beginning each subsequent chapter with a recollection that in some way connects to the chapter’s content.

The book is divided into four sections, each of which advances in time and in the theme of an emerging people as the sub-title suggests.  Although Zia includes a chapter about the history of Asian people in America in the United States, the bulk of the work focuses on the second half of the 20th century, with particular attention to life in Asian communities after the landmark 1965 immigration legislation passed during the Johnson administration. 

Zia is committed to showing the diversity within Asian and Asian American cultures.

As a result, readers learn in different chapters about Filipino cannery workers in Alaska struggling for justice, a Korean American community in Los Angeles devastated by sa-i-gu, the riots or uprising following the 1992 Rodney King verdicts, Asian American actors and actresses fighting against white actors like Jonathan Pryce playing the lead roles in plays like Miss Saigon, and South Asian cab drivers banding together to fight for better treatment. 

In each of these chapters, Zia does an effective job of pushing against the myth of a monolithic and uniformly high achieving group of people.  Instead, the Asian Americans that appears on the pages of Asian American Dreams are struggling to belong in a country where they in many cases either have lived for generations or have arrived at some point in the decades followed the 1965 law. 

The struggles differ by generation. 

Zia writes candidly about her parents’ efforts to impart Chinese values of filial obedience and respect for the community and notes the tensions that arise, especially for female children of immigrants.  These young women have particularly difficult balancing acts, as they are often encouraged in a more domestic direction from home and in a more outspoken direction by the society at large.  She cites Angela Oh, a Korean American activist who ruffled feathers both because of her plain talk and because of her being a woman. 

On the other hand, like many immigrant parents, many of the Asian transplants find themselves working hard to preserve their culture and transmit the values and practices they inherited to children who may not be as willing to receive the lessons and, even if they are, are bombarded by many other conflicting messages.

Asian American Dreams is also a story of national identity. 

Zia makes the point throughout the book that, to this day, many non-Asians immediately assume that Asian Americans must be from overseas, cannot possibly love the country without reservation and are fair game for the seemingly endless variety of stereotypes, fake accents and other forms of degradation. 

Yet, even among many of the older generation, including Zia’s father, who belatedly gains his citizenship after at least two decades in the country, there is indeed among many Asian Americans a love of country and a desire to belong in meaningful ways.

Zia writes movingly too about being a lesbian and having at different points to deny that part of her identity to other civil rights “allies.”  This poignant section introduces a chapter about the struggle for gay marriage in Hawaii that was spearheaded by three couples who sued the state for the right to marry.   One part that stayed with me was when gay marriage advocates within the Japanese American community made the connection between the arguments used for internment and to oppose gay marriage. 

Zia’s willingness to show divisions and conflict within the communities is an additional strength of the work.  She includes a letter she wrote to fellow Asian American journalists urging them to be themselves and not to shy away from or hide parts of their cultures that the larger American society might find objectionable.   Clearly written and argued, the document shows Zia’s courage, intelligence and dedication to the truth.

The book winds down with a chapter about former Washington Governor and current Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke.  Zia writes about his election as governor over opponent and then-Seattle Mayor Norm Rice in a state with a small Asian American community as evidence of the ongoing advancement of Asian Americans in the country. 

The book ends where it began, with her family and her father’s death.  Zia recounts his continual exhortation for his children to achieve and his wish, in the end, that they had turned out to be more American. 

Yet one cannot help but think, after reading this thoughtful and courageous book, that Zia’s father’s vision did materialize, if altered by his children having grown up in a different land where they took his wishes and hatched their own dreams that combined the lessons they inherited, the possibilities they witnessed and the struggles they and others in their community endured.

John Hope Franklin on the Emancipation Proclamation

John Hope Franklin's book about the Emancipation Proclamation is a useful introduction.

Inspired by writing yesterday about recently deceased historian John Hope Franklin, I read his 1963 work, The Emancipation Proclamation.

As the title suggests, the book addresses Lincoln’s historic proclamation that led to millions of slaves being freed at least in name.  

Franklin spends much of the book discussing the build up and response to the proclamation.  He shows the power that high-level newspapermen like Horace Greeleyhad upon popular and even presidential opinion, and effectively depicts, in summar form, the multiple political, military and foreign policy pressures the 16th president had to contend with while making his decision.

Franklin argues that Lincoln made his decision in large part out of military expediency, but later came to understand the momentous nature of his decision for the country’s future generations. 

Franklin includes a memorable description of Lincoln’s hand trembling as he signs the official, rather than preliminary, proclamation on New Year’s Day, 1863, and quotes Lincoln saying with certainty that he was doing the right thing.

Franklin contrasts Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, which represented a breaking away from colonial moorings and an assertion of national independence, with Lincoln’s proclamation, which worked within an existing constitutional system to outlaw slavery in many of the seceding, if not the border, states.

To his credit, he does not shy away from noting that Lincoln was talking even shortly before the proclamation both about compensating former slave owners for their “losses” and about sending the former slaves back to Africa.  Some have maintained that these and other elements of Lincoln’s thought and public statements work against an assessment of him as an unalloyed liberator.

In addition to including photocopies of Lincoln’s preliminary and final proclamations, Franklin has extensive material about how it was received.  Unsurprisingly, the reception varied wildly depending on the region within the United States and domestic situation of the foreign country in question. 

While the vitriolic response of many Southern leaders like Jefferson Davis to the proclamation was predictable, I was a bit surprised to read that a number of people in the abolitionist community were decidedly unimpressed (Interestingly, unflinching slavery opponent William Lloyd Garrison was not among this number.). 

Cleanly written, the book moves along briskly, if not too deeply.  Franklin makes a questionable and unsupported assertion when he writes that millions of people shared the feelings expressed by leaders. 

All in all, while not his masterwork, this slender book by a legendary historian is an informative introduction to the context and response to one of the momentous documents in American history.

R.I.P., John Hope Franklin

The late John Hope Franklin lived a remarkable full of accomplishment and social commitment.

On Wednesday, groundbreaking historian John Hope Franklin took his last breath.

On January 15, a birthday he shared with legendary civil rights leader Martin Luther King,  Jr., he had turned 94 years old.

Franklin tells the story of his remarkable  life, albeit in a typically understated fashion, in Mirror To America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin.

This clearly written and insightful book starts with Franklin’s humble beginnings in an all-black community in Oklahoma, where he endured humiliating experiences because of his race.  Mirror to America continues hrough his education at Fisk University, his doctoral work at Harvard University and his long, distinguished and acclaimed career as an historian.

Mirror to America makes it clear that Franklin took seriously his role as historian and saw as part of his professional responsibility the importance of including the history of black people in America as a central, rather than peripheral part of the American story.

From Slavery to Freedom is his most well known and widely circulated book. 

First published in 1947, the work was repeatedly updated in the following six decades.  By some estimates it had sold at least three million copies.  The book helped contribute to the ultimately successful efforts of Thurgood Marshall and the rest of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to overturn segregation through the collection of cases known as Brown v. Board of Education.

In addition to his scholarship, Franklin broke color barriers as an adminstrator, too.   He was the first black department chair at predominantly white Brooklyn College-a fact which inspired one of his mentees, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Levering Lewis-and the first black president of the American Historical Association. 

He remained civically engaged until his final days, endorsing Barack Obama for President in 2008. 

Franklin received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, in 1995.  The nation is diminished by his loss but greatly enhanced by his socially committed and committed life.

Jacob Holdt’s American Pictures.

A burning cross is just one of many searing images in Jacob Holdt's American Pictures.

Headlines about the brutal economy are plastered everywhere these days. 

From outrage at multiple bailout recipient AIG’s initial decision to award executive bonuses to the monthly accounting of job losses to advice at how to weather the storm, the issue is dominating news coverage and public conversation.

Many people have commented how this recession differs from others both in its severity and in its impact on middle class Americans.  Whereas previous downturns had primarily affected people at the bottom of the economic ladder, this shakeout has had much broader consequences for people of all classes.

In the early 1970s, Jacob Holdt, a young Dane with long, flowing hair and a braided beard, came to the United States. 

During the next five years he hitchiked across the United States.  Living as a self-described vagabond, he stayed wherever he could and sold his blood plasma to take pictures to record his journey. 

In all, he spent $40, or $8 per year.

American Pictures, a searing , stimulating and somewhat flawed look at the United States in the mid-70s, is the result.

American Pictures is a complement to the hours long multi-media show Holdt has presented thousands of times on American campuses.  The project combines Holdt’s pictures, music from Jimmy Cliff, Aretha Franklin and Holly Near, among others, and his words.

Holdt’s essential contention is that, more than a century after the Emancipation Proclamation, America is still a master-slave society, with whites retaining their dominant role and black people still being confined to sub-human conditions.

The images have tremendous power.

Holdt shows the simultaneous suffering of black people and simultaneous enormous wealth of many whites-wealth that in many cases comes as a direct result of black people’s labor. 

Holdt shows wrenching pictures of black people picking cotton, of runny-nosed children, of junkies shooting up to dull their pain, and of families living in utterly ramshackle homes. 

His interviews subjects include a former slave,  people who are so poor they must eat dirt, southern white racists and, for just a minute, Julie Nixon, daughter of then-President Richard Nixon.

The book’s text is a combination of letter excerpts that accompany the images and essays that advance Holdt’s thesis.

He repeatedly has strong words for white liberals who espouse different values than their conservative or more overtly racist counterparts, but who actually benefit from the system and do nothing substantial to change it. 

Despite all the oppression endured by black people, Holdt also shows the resilience, love and tenderness that exist among and between many in the community. 

He tries to maintain an openness toward wealthy people and does spend time with some of America’s most prominent families like the Kennedys and Rockefellers.

While the book and multi-media show are dominated by images of African-Americans, Holdt does have some material about the 1973 struggle by the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, which he describes as a partial victory.

American Pictures has mutliple strong points.

Like his countryman, Jacob Riis, whose work, How The Other Half Lives, brought to light the suffering experienced by many Americans in the late 19th century, Holdt has dedicated his life to witnessing, documenting and sharing with others the lives of American’s underclass.  His work is underpinned by a profoundly moral vision and, from his life in Denmark, an understanding that socially progressive policies are possible.

The power of his images are undeniable, particularly when seen in conjunction with the music and narration.  My brother Jon and I first saw American Pictures at Holdt’s home in Copenhagen in the summer of 1985, the night before I was returning to the United States from studying in Florence and traveling in Europe. 

Flying into New York’s Kennedy Airport and seeing black sky caps wait on almost exclusively white passengers gave me an insight into a country in which I lived, but not fully seen that way, before.

To his credit, Holdt has continued his work for Third World development and has taken the show to campuses across the United States. 

He also questions his own actions and finds himself wanting.  Holdt recounts a failed marriage to a black American woman who he actually struck during an argument, and often questions whether his art is simply another vehicle to exploit an already abused people.

Still, the work has several significant challenges.

To begin, black people are presented as an undifferentiated mass and almost exclusively as victims.  While there are scenes of connection and physical intimacy between African Americans-at times one can wonder about Holdt’s specific purpose in including multiple pictures of naked black women-their number and emotional resonance are dwarfed by the unrelenting misery that he depicts.

This is all true, and there are many black people who are not part of the underclass that Holdt shows, yet a viewer would not know it from watching and listening to his powerful presentation.

Holdt also has an almost completely binary vision of American society.  While native peoples are mentioned in the section on Wounded Knee, the country’s millions of Latinos, who actually have outnumbered black people in America for several years, are nowhere to be seen.  This absence is striking because Holdt’s analysis is ultimately predicated on the omission of a major group within American society.

Holdt’s relationship to his subjects is another issue to consider.  He makes the argument in the book that his outsider status, vagabond philosophy and facial hair make him almost exempt from the racial structures of American soceity. 

Having spent a year in South Africa in the mid-90s, I understand what Holdt means and give him full credit for going to the places he did and doing the work that he did.  I will also say that I concluded for myself, in retrospect, that my assumptions of immunity from South Africa’s racial dynamics because of my good intentions and willingness to go to places where many white South Africans did not venture seemed less sturdy than they did at the time. 

To be fair, Holdt has extended the work and the images beyond the version of the book that I have.  Holdt’s commitment to the underclass and to public conversation is highly laudable.  American Pictures is a valuable contribution whose significant areas of omission and lack of distinction require scrutiny to gain a fuller understanding of American society.

Steve Biko Writes What He Likes

Steve Biko spells out his doctrine of Black Consciousness in this collection of writings.

It’s been more than 30 years since Steve Biko died at the hands of South Africa’s apartheid government, but the power of his life still resonates.

The former medical student and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement is considered by many to be a martyr of the anti-apartheid movement.  His life has been commemorated in film-in Cry Freedom Denzel Washington played a saintly and non violent Biko who was the vehicle to show the growth of  white journalist Donald Woods, played by Kevin Kline-on t-shirts and in books.

I Write What I Like is a collection of Biko’s own writings, and is, in some ways, a more effective way to understand Biko’s thinking and actions.

I Write What I Like begins in 1969, shortly after Biko became president of the South African Students’ Organization.    Writing under the pseudonym Frank Talk, Biko articulates and promotes the doctrine of black pride and black consciousness throughout the book.

One of the book’s basic premises is that black people in South Africa must shape their own political destiny.  In order to do so, they had to decolonize their minds from the negative stereotypes, images and treatment they continually endured from white people and the apartheid government and celebrate their rich and vibrant culture.

This was a radical notion, particularly when evaluated in the context of the times.

Biko’s writings and activism came at a critical point and low period of South Africa’s liberation struggle.  Prominent leaders like Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu had been imprisoned and the Soweto uprisings of 1976 had not yet occurred.   In the film Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony, the late, great Miriam Makeba appears and sings about the movement’s mournful mood during those years.

Biko pushed against that, and instead urged black South Africans to chart their own path to freedom.  Clear and incisive, the writings are particularly interesting when one considers the  the assertions from many in the United States at the same time about black being beautiful.    I Write What I Like is long on general statements and shorter on a specific plan to reach the desired goal, although a look at the clinic and creche Biko founded despite being banned can be helpful on that front.

The book ends in 1972, when Biko was banned from publishing. 

Despite this prohibition and subsequent travel ban, Biko continued to agitate for a free and democratic South Africa.  His death in police custody after a seven-day hunger strike represented a major loss for the movement, the country and humanity.    I Write What I Like helps the reader understand both the contributions he made and the magnitude of the hole caused by his death at just 30 years of age.

The Madness Resumes, Larry and Magic

Seth Davis tells the tale of the original Larry vs. Magic match up in When March Went Mad.

March Madness resumes tomorrow night, and should bring plenty of excitement.

From Ty Lawson’s toe to Oklahoma big man’s Blake Griffin’s possible final college games to Memphis coach John Calipari’s quest for his first title, the tournament is chock full of plot lines.

The tournament has grown exponentially since 1979, when Larry Bird’s undefeated Indiana State Sycamores faced off against Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans.

Sports Illustrated writer and CBS television analyst Seth Davis argues that this game was the birth of what we call March Madness in his new book, When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball.

I should be clear that the book is much more of a behind-the-scenes tale of that pivotal match up rather than a scholarly argument.

Davis revisits the two protagonists in the drama, their markedly different personalities and their teams’ circumstances. 

The introverted Bird refused to talk to the media for nearly the entire season.  The gregarious Johnson could not get enough media attention and autograph signing.  Davis recounts the impact of the stars’ personalities on their teams, too.  At the end of a blowout, Johnson and his teammates were cutting up at the end of the bench.  In a similar situation, Bird sat stonefaced,  his teammates basically saying nothing.

Bird had just one teammate, Carl Nicks, who spent any time in the NBA, while Magic had a stronger supporting cast anchored by Greg Kelser and Jay Vincent.  Sycamores coach Bill Hodges replaced head coach Bob King before the season began, while Spartans coach Jud Heathcote was a Big Ten fixture.  Magic’s team had done well the previous season and was predicted to be a championship contender before the season began.  Bird’s squad was picked to finish third or fourth in their conference.

Despite these differences, the men shared fundamental similarities of a passion for excellence, a relentless commitment to victory, and an ability to improve their teammates’ play. 

Davis skillfully shows the build up to the final match up. 

Playing in the rough and tumble Big Ten, the Spartans had a rough patch midway through the season in which they appeared in danger of not making the tournament, while the Sycamores’ undefeated streak, and their confidence, grew throughout the season, aided by an occasional miracle shot by Bob Heaton.

Davis also does an excellent job of providing previously undiscussed tidbits throughout the story. 

I had not known about Bird’s ignoring of Magic’s greeting before the final game, for example. 

Nor had I heard about Magic’s retort, five years later, when the Celtics beat the Lakers in Game Seven to win their fourteenth championship. 

Bird told Magic, “I got you back.” 

His rival responded, in essence, “I’m gonna win other championships, but I’ll aways have something you don’t-a  college championship.”

The exchange is revealing. 

It shows both how much the loss stayed with Bird and Magic’s equal desire for victory and understanding of the moment.  It also demonstrates how, for all his cheerful demeanor, Magic had a ruthless side that refused to be bested.

In the end, Magic was right. 

Davis shows that, despite Boston Globe sportswriter Bob Ryan’s claim that Bird’s leading his team to the finals was the greatest feat in NCAA basketball history, there could only be one victor at the moment and forever afterward.

Magic got the last word on a televised meeting between the two stars in 1999, 20 years after the game, and Davis ends the book with Bird’s voice wavering as he spoke about his play in the final game to an Indiana State crowd last year. 

The ending is a fitting demonstration of Davis’ storytelling skills.  One of the best parts of When March Went Mad is how Davis uses the benefit of hindsight of the game’s and the superstars’ importance while also keeping us rooted in 1979, when their later greatness was not yet known.

In short, When March Went Mad is an entertaining and accessible read that is nearly guaranteed to please hoops junkies.  It can be consumed in parts, too, so readers should feel free to get a few pages in between the hundreds, if not thousands, of commercials  that will take place between tomorrow night and Sunday, when the identity of this year’s Final Four participants will be known.

Sonia Nazario and Alex Kotlowitz in conversation tonight

I wrote yesterday about Sonia Nazario and her book Enrique’s Journey.

She will be speaking tonight at a community conversation with award-winning journalist and my former teacher Alex Kotlowitz tonight at Whitney Young High School.

Facing History and Ourselves, my wife Dunreith’s employer, is the sponsor.

Social Studies Methods Class, Enrique’s Journey

Sonia Nazario tells the gripping story of a Honduran boy's quest to find his mother in America.

There is so much bad news about newspapers’ finances these days that it is all too easy easy to overlook the great work that has appeared on their pages. 

To some degree, this is understandable. 

The economy is in terrible shape throughout the world.  Journalism in particular is like the Titanic post-crashing into the iceberg, with the question being when, but not if, papers will fall, possibly, but not certainly, to be replaced by online versions of the publication.   More and more, reporters and photographers are coming to resemble the polar bears who are pictured on increasingly shrinking pieces of ice due to global warming.

For three years, my former journalism professor Jon Marshall highlighted through his News Gems blog excellent examples of journalism practice.

Marshall’s efforts notwithstanding, news about the Rocky Mountain News’ recent closure just shy of its 150th anniversary threatens to erase the memory of photographer Todd Heisler and reporter Jim Sheeler’s outstanding work.  

The result of a full year’s worth of work, the project told the story of  Steve Beck, a Marine in Denver whose job it is to tell the families of other Marines that their loved one has been killed in Iraq.  The News devoted a special pullout section to the project, which earned Pulitzers for both Heisler, my brother’s friend, and Sheeler. 

In a similar vein, news of the Los Angeles Times’ financial woes could obscure the brilliant collaboration between photographer Don Bartletti and reporter Sonia Nazario that won more a dozen awards after the publication of a series of article s entitled Enrique’s Journey.  The project depicted the efforts of Enrique, a Honduran teacher, to leave his hometown and find his mother in the United States. 

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother is the book version of Enrique’s harrowing tale.

The book begins in Honduras. 

Enrique’s mother Lourdes is preparing to depart for the United States to earn more money and provide for her family, which lives in desperate and grinding poverty.

She plans to be gone a year, at most.

Enrique, who is five years old, does not understand.

His comprehension does not improve as the years go by and his mother does not return.  Angry and hurt, he acts up in school, starts sniffing glue and gets kicked out of relatives’ houses. 

Finally, he resolves to leave his home in the outskirts of Tegucigalpa and find his mother.

His departure, like that of about 700,000 undocumented migrants, from his home instantly places him onto a perilous path where he encounters a series of life-threatening obstacles.  Against them, he has his resourcefulness, his will, the generosity of fellow travelers and the mercy of strangers.

It is often an uneven match.

Nazario retraced Enrique’s journey across the trains to which migrants routinely lose limbs.   She traveled along the route where murder and rape are common.  And she journeyed across the border, where coyotes treat migrants as commodities to be exploited.

Seven times, Enrique was sent back by law enforcement, enduring beatings, hunger and terrifying fear along the way.  Seven times, he resumed his quest.

Eventually, he made it.

The reunion with his, initially replete with joy, soon became difficult. 

Nazario shows Lourdes’ guilt at being away so long and her expectation of gratitude for the sacrifices she made for, and the money she sent to, her children.  For his part, Enrique is no longer a boy and must confront a flesh and blood Lourdes who is different from the idealized image he had created to sustain him during the previous decade and on his journey. 

Enrique has left a girlfriend and a daughter behind in Honduras. One of the book’s most painful moments comes when Maria Isabel, his girlfriend, leaves the daughter behind and sets out to rejoin Enrique in the United States. 

The book ends with Nazario helping to arrange a live  televised reunion between Enrique’s mother Lourdes, and her daughter, Belky, whom she had not seen for 17 years. 

Belky is asked if the separation, which led to the family having a home in Honduras, was worth it.  

A recent mother herself, the 24-year-old responds, “The love of a mother is something you cannot replace with anything else.”

Enrique’s Journey is far more than the story of an individual family. 

Through his travels, we learn about the economic conditions that drive so many migrants, an increasing portion of whom are women, to leave their homes and journey north.   We learn about the emotional and financial consequences  of that departure.  And we learn about the hazy and perilous zone of illegality the migrants enter the second they leave their families.   Nazario also includes a more general analysis of U.S. immigration policy that makes explicit her thoughts about the system that she has conveyed through her telling of the family’s story.

Emotionally wrenching and the product of remarkable commitment by both Nazario and Bartletti, Enrique’s Journey is a powerful tale conveyed in simple, direct prose.  For those looking for a reminder of why newspapers had such a dominant position in Americans’ understanding of the world, the book is a fine place to start.