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From Border Crossings to Campaign Trail: Chronicle of a Latina in Politics

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Emma Sepulveda emigrated to the United States from Chile in 1974, a young college student who had supported President Salvadore Allende and thus was in some degree of peril following the coup that left Allende dead. She learned English, became a U.S. citizen, eventually earned a Ph.D. in Spanish language and literature, won prizes in photography, poetry and for literary criticism, and became extremely involved in community activism to improve the lot of Latinos in her adopted city of Reno, Nevada. She also traveled back to Chile to help Las Arpilleristas, the mothers and wives of those who "disappeared" under the Gen. Pinochet reign of terror and who were trying to locate the whereabouts (or remains) of their loved ones. These women made tapestries to both publicize and raise money for their cause. Sepulveda helped make a documentary about these women, and it won a Peabody Award.

Twenty years after she arrived in the United States, Sepulveda ran for the state senate from her local district. In a grass-roots, pavement-pounding, door-knocking campaign, she got first-hand glimpses into not only the lives of recent immigrants but others among our society's disenfranchised: children and senior citizens in poverty, single mothers and divorcees working low-paid jobs. Her encounters with disaffected gun nuts and others are a bath of cold water, although a measure of humor is included. Sepulveda visited the halls of power not only in Nevada but in Washington, D.C., to raise money for her campaign against a well-heeled, white Republican male, Nevada political insider. The reader may end up feeling as if he or she has run a political campaign.

Sepulveda's blow-by-blow account of her campaign - dirty campaign tactics and all (including phoned death threats) - is a captivating chronicle of present American society and our democratic election process. It also spins a compelling tale of an immigrant's journey (early chapters describe life in Argentina and Chile and the Allende saga), and paints a portrait of the slowly emerging clout of Latinos in our country.