A powerful, well-researched survey of the lives of agricultural guest workers.
Durbin explores the hidden lives of H-2A temporary agricultural workers in this nonfiction work.
At its inception in 1987, the H-2A visa program certified just over 40 positions for temporary nonimmigrant workers to enter the United States. Today, the number of so-called guest workers, most of whom are Mexican men who leave their families for seasonal crop work, has soared to more than 300,000. This look into the lives of seasonal agricultural workers in eastern North Carolina begins in Mexico as men like 60-year-old Domingo Álvarez begin a multiday transnational bus trip from their home to the Tar Heel State. While the contributions of guest workers to the American economy receive ample coverage (“We need them. They need us,” Durbin writes), what makes this book stand out is its deeply personal narrative. Readers learn about the rompecabezas de enredo (handmade entanglement puzzles made from wires and cords) that one older migrant makes for the journey; social dynamics that exist inside worker communities (where the mayordomo is “the most-senior member of a grower’s crew…who can speak enough English to receive instructions from the grower, or patrón”); and how workers communicate with family via Facebook and WhatsApp messages. While many note how work in the United States has provided them with “a better economic situation,” the workers’ living conditions and tenuous employment, exacerbated by abusive growers, have also bred a culture of “fear of retaliation” among many who declined to have their names published. (Although he uses pseudonyms, Durbin assures readers that the workers referenced are not composites, but real people he interviewed or witnessed firsthand.) He observes that, as sincere as nonprofit organizations (particularly the Episcopalian ministry that the author tagged along with while researching the book) may be in their desire to assist workers, their needs far outweigh the available charity. One worker, for example, was given a bag of ground coffee from a local church, but it sat unused on his shelf, since he had no way to brew it.
Using interviews with more than 80 farmworkers, in addition to the “few growers willing to speak with me,” Durbin has assembled a revealing look into the lived experiences of guest workers. The author is nonpartisan in his analysis of the complexities of U.S. immigration policy; while emphasizing the “extraordinary sacrifices” made by farmworkers with H-2A visas, Durbin makes a compelling case that “we as a nation can honor that sacrifice” by improving guest workers’ working and living conditions. The author of multiple books on financial derivatives who has taught at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and spent a career in software engineering for the banking industry, Durbin presents poignant anecdotes accompanied by impressive quantitative analyses backed by more than 20 pages of citations and bibliographic entries. Graphs, charts, and other visual aids accompany each chapter, making the more analytical passages accessible for nonacademic readers.
A powerful, well-researched survey of the lives of agricultural guest workers.Pub Date: June 24, 2024
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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