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Ted Conover, Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens (Vintage, 1987) What better way to document the lives of undocumented immigrants in the United States than to hangout with them for a year? Having rolled along with America's hoboes already, Conover's next challenge was illegally crossing the Rio Grande with a human trafficker (a coyote) and for the next year, trying to look as non-American as possible. He picks oranges in California and Florida and rides cars in snowstorms at 25mph with his new Mexican friends. He spent a month in a Mexican village and a day in a Mexican jail, and crosses the border again, this time through the Arizona desert. At the end, even the sharp-eyed coyotes took the light-haired and blue-eyed Colorado native for just another Mexican going north to work. Michiko Kakutani writes for the New York Times: Mr. Conover combines a sociologist's eye for detail with a novelist's sense of drama and compassion; and as one of the principal characters in the story, he is able to turn his own observations and reactions into a kind of index of the cultural differences between Mexico and the United States. There is no attempt on his part to objectively report the complicated facts involved in our country's immigration policy, but then he makes no pretense of doing so. His aim is simply to show the 'human side of the men and women' that La Migra arrests, 'the drama of their lives,' and in that he has defiantly succeeded. Once again, a work to look up to and a true inspiration to any investigative reporter. MORE: Amazon Barnes & Noble Coyotes reviews, as printed on the back cover of the book |
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