The reading list

Reading list. Books on border crossing and books on the part the United States played in destabilising Central American countries.

  1. The Faraway Brothers (2018) by Lauren Markham. This is the true story of twin brothers fleeing violence in El Salvador to build new lives in California. Named one of the best books of the year by NYT Book Review.
  2. Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (2017) by Valeria Luiselli. Depicts the nightmares children flee from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, as well as the nightmare of destructive ignorance and bigotry that awaits them in America.
  3. Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, Revised and Expanded (2005) (Series on Latin American Studies) by Stephen Schlesinger. First published in 1982.
  4. Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1997) by Eduardo Galeano. “A superbly written, excellently translated, and powerfully persuasive exposé which all students of Latin American and U.S. history must read.”—Choice
  5. Turning the Tide: U.S. Intervention in Central America and the Struggle for Peace (2015) by Noam Chomsky. “What is going on, why, and what concerned citizens can do about it.”
  6. I, Rigoberta Menchú: An Indian Woman in Guatemala (2010) by Rigoberta Menchú. “Rigoberta Menchú received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her efforts to end the oppression of indigenous peoples in Guatemala.”
  7. When The Mountains Tremble. Documentary featuring Rigoberta Menchú, directed by Pamela Yates Centered on the experiences of Rigoberta Menchú, a Maya K’iche leader, and indigenous struggle against state & foreign oppression.
  8. Granito: How To Nail A Dictator. directed by Pamela Yates Follow-up documentary to When the Mountains Tremble. Be advised content in both documentaries is harrowing, though essential to the study of this region’s history.
  9. Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand. (2009) “Through a widening canvas, Brand unfolds the (im)possibilities of belonging for those whom history has dispossessed.”
  10. The Devil’s Highway: A True Story by Luis Alberto Urrea. (2004) “The single most compelling, lucid, and lyrical contemporary account of the absurdity of US border policy.” —The Atlantic. A Pulitzer Prize Finalist.
  11. Enrique’s Journey, based on the LATimes series that won two Pulitzer Prizes by Sonia Nazario (2007) “Enrique’s Journey is among the best border books yet written.” —The Washington Post Book World
  12. Unaccompanied. poetry collection by Javier Zamora (2017) “Humanizes the highly charged and polarizing rhetoric of border-crossing; assesses borderland politics, race, and immigration on a profoundly personal level;”
  13. The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú. “Lays bare, in damning light . . . how unjust laws and private prisons and a militarized border have shattered families and mocked America’s myths about itself.” —NYTimes Book Review