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Underground America tells the stories of men and women who have come to the United States seeking a better life for their families, only to be subjected to dehumanizing working conditions. Supporting myriad industries, these workers form an essential part of our economy — often by working the least desirable jobs without the most basic legal protections. Underground America allows this largely ignored part of our country to finally share its experiences.
- Sales Rank: #114994 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-10-01
- Released on: 2015-10-01
- Format: Kindle eBook
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. McSweeney's Voices of Witness series continues (following Voices of the Storm and Surviving Justice) with this collection of oral histories from undocumented immigrants, aka "illegal aliens": "We hear a lot about these people in the media... how they are responsible for crime... take our jobs... and refuse to speak English. But how often do we hear from them?" Culled from new interviews, the book's 24 subjects come from around the world (Mexico, China, South Africa, Colombia, Cameroon and others), each offering a vivid, personal, often wrenching and occasionally enraging first-person look into the immigrant experience, what editor and novelist Orner calls a "state of permanent anxiety." Roberto, for instance, details narrow brushes with government agents as well as the everyday dangers inherent to unregulated work: "Nectarines are covered in this dust that makes your skin itch... You wear gloves when you're picking them but, because of the sweat, your skin absorbs everything, right into the pores." Diana, from Peru, worked on Hurricane Katrina cleanup and reconstruction crews while living 20 or more to a house: "I still have spots on my legs... from the chemicals and insulation that came off the walls at those jobsites." Average news-watchers who think they have a grasp on the immigration debate may well find these stories, speaking for millions of invisible American residents, no less than revelatory.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“In a time when history is told in cheap television reenactments, if at all, and personal tragedy is gobbled up in rapidly digestible magazine photos and reality shows, this project goes against the grain.”
—Guardian
“Bold and heartbreaking.”
—Miami SunPost
“Average news-watchers who think they have a grasp on the immigration debate may well find these stories, speaking for millions of invisible American residents, no less than revelatory.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
About the Author
Peter Orner is the author of two novels, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and Love and Shame and Love, as well as two collections of stories, Esther Stories and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge. For the Voice of Witness series, Orner also co-edited Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives with Annie Holmes. Orner has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and holds a law degree from Northeastern University. He is currently a Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. He lives in Bolinas, California.
Luis Alberto Urrea was born in Tijuana, Mexico and is a member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame. He is the author of numerous books, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The Devil’s Highway, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His latest novel is Into the Beautiful North. Urrea is a professor at The University of Illinois–Chicago.
Most helpful customer reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Taking the underground above ground
By Susanna Zaraysky
The book does an excellent job of showing the human side of the underground world of millions people in the United States.
A few weeks ago, I took Amtrak from San Jose, California to Los Angeles. While looking out the window at the strawberry farms in the Central Valley, I saw the migrant farm workers hunched over or kneeling in the hot sun as they picked strawberries. As a child and teenager, going strawberry picking at the pick-it-yourself farms in Watsonville, near Santa Cruz, was always a fun trip for me and I looked forward to going. For these workers, the strawberries were their sustenance, not a weekend family outing. Despite my yearly trips to the farm country, I never knew much about how these farm workers lived until I read their personal accounts in the book, Underground America.
Reading the stories of undocumented migrants in the book, Underground America, gave me a glimpse into the lives of not just the migrant farm workers harvesting the Golden State's crops, but into the difficulties of many people living illegally in the United States. The book gives a human face to the statistics we see on TV about illegal immigration. I was familiar with the harsh living conditions and migration patterns of undocumented Latin Americans in the US, but I was quite shocked at the stories of the African, South Asian, Chinese and Iranians in the book. One woman from South Africa came to the United States to work as a missionary and ended up cleaning and cooking in the dirty house of the pastor's daughter. She came to do the work of the Lord and was instead used for cheap labor. In order to pay for her family member's HIV treatments, she had to stay in the US and work as a nanny and housekeeper.
The conditions described in the detention facilities for illegal immigrants seem to parallel those in maximum security prisons. Why do we treat the people who do the jobs that few legal residents would ever want to do with such disgust? There was a striking story of a Mexican woman who came to the US with her two children. Her eldest son Victor became a transgender woman named Vica. She got AIDS. Vica was caught in an immigration raid and taken to a detention facility where the doctors refused to give her her needed AIDS medicines. She died chained to a bed.
These stories make take away the hidden nature of the underground in the United States. The strawberries have a story to them, and it's not sweet. The illegals are not criminals. We are profiting from their work and we have to face the reality of the way our economy works in the United States. We must be aware of the immigration struggle and the implications of our laws and government in order to create a just society.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Gets to the heart of the issue
By Tony Donahoe
Orner and his team of interviewers slice through all the political rhetoric and get at what really matters--the people--by letting "illegals" from all walks tell their stories. Reading these narratives, your heart will break and your blood will boil. With immigration sure to be a hot button debate this fall in the general election, any person who wants to speak intelligently to the issue owes it to themselves to read this book. In the tradition of Studs Terkel's Division Street USA and other great oral histories, this is a great and important book.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Ain't No Ellis Island
By EGD
Underground America is a superb work that chronicles the true stories of a diverse collection of undocumented aliens living in all corners of the continental U.S. Most of the interviewees are immigrants from Latin America or East Asia. Some came to flee persecution at home, others to escape poverty in countries devoid of economic opportunity. Some came decades ago, others just a few years ago. Some have families and extensive support networks in the U.S., others are here alone and lament years of estrangement from spouses, parents, and above all children. Almost all of them live at the constant mercy of organized crime, predatory romantic partners, exploitative employers, and above all, the immigration authorities. Most subsist on marginal wages in semi-legal businesses, and lack practically all access to health care, higher education, legitimate employment, and virtually all manner of government services and legal protections. To reach the U.S., most of these immigrants paid thousands of dollars to coyotes or incurred tens of thousands in debt to snakeheads. Many endured perilous journeys weeks or months in duration to enter the country without detection. Their stories are reported as sophisticated, first-hand narratives, compiled by a team of expert interviewers, precisely translated and edited. Brief and remarkable, Underground America illustrates the human side of the contemporary U.S. immigration policy debate. Sometimes the facts are their own best argument.
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