Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This first title in the Vintage Departures series (``devoted to exploring the vastness of the world, of one's life, or even of one's own backyard'') focuses on the world of illegal aliens. Conover, author of Rolling Nowhere, posed as an immigrant, crossing the border twice and learning first-hand about ``coyotes''those who sneak Mexicans and other Latin Americans across the border, often under murderous conditions. Menaced by hoods, arrested, freed, forced to dodge spotter planes, Conover spent a year, as he puts it, ``working, drinking, smoking, driving, sleeping, sweating and shivering with Mexicans.'' His conclusion: ``It is urgent that we know more about these people who ask little more than to wash our dishes, vacuum our cars, and pick our fruit.'' This well-written, anecdotal account offers an intimate glimpse of the United States from a perspective few citizens are aware of. (September) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Conover, author of an earlier book on hobos, studies Mexican illegal aliens by living their life and crossing the border with them. His book is similar to John Davidson's The Long Journey North ( LJ 10/15/79), but Conover takes dangerous personal risks, spends more time with his contacts, covers a larger group of Mexicans, and ranges across Idaho, Arizona, and Florida as he describes how these people migrate within the United States. His experiences in central Mexico effectively capture the immigrant's impact on his own rural community, although one wishes for deeper personal insights into his subjects' motivations. An eminently readable and revealing account. Highly recommended. Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Studies Dept., Central Coll., Pella, Ia . (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
YA The title refers to the name given to those people who smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. Conover lived among the people who pay ``coyotes'' enormous sums of money to be brought into this country secretly under condi tions that are full of physical threat. The most touching part of the book is the description of Conover's visit to Ahua catlan, the province from which many of the men he has met come. Here he wit nesses what has happened to the families left behind. While the money the men have earned has resulted in some im provement, there is still enormous pov erty in their lives, and their home life is drifting toward disintegration. There is humor, too, including a hilarious episode in which several men pool enough mon ey together to fly from Mexico to Los Angeles but must find the appropriate clothing and behaviors to avoid arousing suspicions by ``La Migra.'' Conover has done a good job of capturing the difficult lives of these men who want only to earn a decent wage to support their fami lies. Barbara Weathers, Duchesne Academy, Houston (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In 1983, Conover delivered an agreeably fresh-faced account of life among American railroad tramps (Rolling Nowhere); here, he offers an equally enthusiastic if more savvy chronicle of a year spent with Mexicans who sneak across the Rio Grande in search of jobs in ""El Norte."" Conover's sympathies lie with these ""wetbacks""--no surprise since he shared with them both the terrors of border-crossing and the agonies of migrant work. He opens with a brisk rendition of his first crossing--a frightening odyssey front central Mexico up to Laredo spent in the company of a young wetback, Alonso, and in constant fear of his life at the hands of coyotes (smugglers of wetbacks; Conover poses as a gringo on the lam, but ""this was the sort of situation in which, if you made one false step, you could die""). After harassment by Mexican cops (a $4.00 bribe shakes them off) and a midnight paddle on an inflatable raft over the Rio Grande, the two arrive in Texas--only for Alonso to be arrested soon after. Undaunted, Conover links up with other migrants, sharing their dirt-floored shacks, their meager food, their 18-hour days picking oranges, trying to meet the intra-US coyotes who ferry hapless Mexicans from job to job (he does, but also serves as an unpaid coyote himself--in a hilarious episode, ushering a band of migrants on their first plane ride, to L.A.; and driving several more across country to Florida). Then it's back to Mexico, where he lives for a spell in a shockingly poor town (a hiatus of heat and dust that eloquently explains the exodus north), concluding with a last harrowing run, this time across a brutal desert, up and into the promised land. A loaded account (Conover pays only a nod to American workers displaced by Mexicans); but mostly intriguing, sometimes gripping, reporting--and a golden key to understanding the migrant influx. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by School Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
