Dominican artist, curator, and activist Lizania Cruz, whose latest project, “Obituaries of the American Dream,” was commissioned by El Museo del Barrio for “Estamos Bien: La Trienal 20/21,” discusses the difference between integration and assimilation, storytelling as a means for understanding, and why traveling between states in the U.S. should be considere ... Show More
Oct 2023
Sarah Lohman on Creating a More Affordable, Healthful, and Moral Food System
The culinary historian Sarah Lohman, author of the new book “Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods,” talks about the importance of engaging with local foodways, why “the idea that eating McDonald’s is universally bad is woefully unaware of class and racial conflicts,” and ... Show More
24m 57s
Sep 2024
Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions
Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common ... Show More
1h 8m
Jul 2023
Anthony Russell Jerry, "Blackness in Mexico: Afro-Mexican Recognition and the Production of Citizenship in the Costa Chica" (UP of Florida, 2023)
Through historical and ethnographic research, Blackness in Mexico: Afro-Mexican Recognition and the Production of Citizenship in the Costa Chica (UP of Florida, 2023) delves into the ongoing movement toward recognizing Black Mexicans as a cultural group within a nation that has l ... Show More
47m 12s
Oct 2023
Marisel C. Moreno, "Crossing Waters: Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art" (U Texas Press, 2022)
Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations ... Show More
1h 15m
Sep 2023
Gilberto Rosas, "Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the US-Mexico Border" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
On August 3, 2019, a far-right extremist committed a deadly mass shooting at a major shopping center in El Paso, Texas, a city on the border of the United States and Mexico. In Unsettling, Gilberto Rosas situates this devastating shooting as the latest unsettling consequence of o ... Show More
44m 48s
Jul 2023
Jessica P. Cerdeña, "Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers" (U California Press, 2023)
Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers (U California Press, 2023) centers the stories of mothers who migrated from Latin America, settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and overcame trauma and ongoing adversity to build futures for their children. These ... Show More
58m 3s
Jun 2024
Laura Gómez, "Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism" (The New Press, 2020)
Latinos have long influenced everything from electoral politics to popular culture, yet many people instinctively regard them as recent immigrants rather than a longstanding racial group. In Inventing Latinos: A New Story of American Racism (The New Press, 2020), Laura Gómez, a l ... Show More
1h 3m
Jul 2024
Angela Garcia, "The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City's Anexos" (FSG, 2024)
Based on over a decade of research, a powerful, moving work of narrative nonfiction that illuminates the little-known world of the anexos of Mexico City, the informal addiction treatment centers where mothers send their children to escape the violence of the drug war.The Way That ... Show More
50m 55s
Aug 2024
Ana Raquel Minian, “Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration” (Harvard UP, 2018)
In the 1970s, the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the United States to find work that would help them survive as well as sustain their families in Mexico. They took low-level positions ... Show More
1h 5m