Exodus/Éxodo (Bill and Alice Wright Photography Series) [Hardcover]

Charles Bowden (Author), Julián Cardona (Photographer)

Book Description

Series: Bill and Alice Wright Photography Series | Publication Date: October 1, 2008

Immigration has become one of the most important and contentious issues of our time. But even as policy makers in the United States and Mexico argue over what to do about the half million or more Mexicans who cross the border illegally each year to work in the United States, one fact has become indisputable. Illegal immigration has enhanced the lives of poor people more than any policy attempted by either the U.S. or the Mexican governments. Immigrants sent home $23 billion dollars in 2006 alone, rivaling what Mexico earned from selling oil. But the human cost of migration is equally high. Border crossers risk injury, attack, rape, and death, while undocumented workers often toil under dangerous and exploitative conditions in the United States. These harsh realities constitute the heart of Exodus/Éxodo, a powerful collaboration between writer Charles Bowden and photographer Julián Cardona that puts a human face on the issue of illegal immigration. Expanding on their award-winning 2006 Mother Jones article titled "Exodus: Border-Crossers Forge a New America," Bowden and Cardona take us to border towns, in which impoverished men and women hire "coyotes" to get them across the line; to Ciudad Juárez, where hundreds of young women maquiladora workers have been murdered and their families still seek justice; to Minutemen camps along the border, where citizen vigilantes keep watch; to New Orleans, North Carolina, and California, where migrants find back-breaking work in construction, agriculture, and other industries; to protest marches, as immigrants assert their right to stay in the United States; and to villages in Mexico, in which remitted dollars are building homes as lavish as the dreams that fuel the migrations.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 295 pages
• Publisher: University of Texas Press; First Edition edition (October 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0292718144
• ISBN-13: 978-0292718142
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,662,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remove the veil and see, if you dare, December 1, 2008

By 

Don H. Ford Jr. "author of Contrabando" (Seguin, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Exodus/Éxodo (Bill and Alice Wright Photography Series) (Hardcover)

Few subjects stir passions and fears more than illegal immigration along the border between the United States and Mexico. Yet most on either side of the issue are uninformed or worse yet, misinformed.

In Exodus/Éxodo Chuck Bowden and Julian Cardona present clear views of the people involved in this massive modern day migration, Chuck with eloquent prose and an American perspective and Julian with revealing photographs from a distinctly Mexican point of view, not only of the people risking life and limb to make the journey, but also the places from which they flee, the jobs to which they go and of the people that either aid or impede their efforts along the way. Unlike many journalists that regurgitate the works of others, Bowden and Cardona find the source of the story on their own dime, often at great personal risk, to bring back glimpses from the front lines.

It is easy enough to condemn a hypothetical illegal immigrant but not near so easy to condemn a man with a face and a name, with real blood flowing through his veins, sharing the same air as we do, facing similar fears, and perhaps praying to the same God before laying his life on the line so that his family may have food and shelter. It's also easy to condemn those along the border that dislike migrants until you witness the awful effect their passing has on the land of those that call the region home.

Chuck and Julian have the distinction of being the voice and the eyes that show us how things really are only to be rejected by those that control the accepted consensus until a sufficient number of years have passed. Then and only then are the visions they tried to share quoted as fact, the original sources forgotten.

I for one, do not forget.

The book is coffee table sized and printed on high quality paper. Suitable for libraries or places of honor in fine homes.