“My four parents had always decried the labor abuses perpetuated around the world.” Four? Yes. When Boudin’s radical Jewish parents were imprisoned in New York from the early 1980s, he was raised in Chicago by Weathermen William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Over the last decade, the award-winning Rhodes and Rotary Scholar has interrupted his academic studies to travel to 25 countries across Latin America, and this gripping narrative weaves together his personal journey with his acute, on-the-ground political observation. There is no self-importance, no simplistic message, always the wry awareness that he is the privileged tourist gringo in his cargo pants and multipocketed vest, even as he witnesses ecological devastation, economic crises, and the struggle of the indigenous movements. Down a mine in Bolivia, he is reminded of his regular prison visits to his parents. Even readers who skip the detailed local politics from Venezuela to Colombia will be held by the broader issues, as he confronts the difference between need and want, the value of privacy, the luxury of space. --Hazel Rochman
"
Gringo might well be Orwell's
Down and Out in Paris and London for the Millennial Generation, except that instead of Paris and London, it's Caracas and Quito and the Amazon Basin." -- Russell Banks, author of
Cloudsplitter and
Dreaming Up America"In
Gringo, Chesa Boudin takes us on a delightfully engaging trip through Latin America, in an ingenious combination of memoir and commentary. The personal story is unflinchingly honest, and the political judgments nuanced and thoughtful. Latin America is at the outer edge of consciousness in this country, and Chesa Boudin brings it back to our attention, eloquently and vigorously." -- Howard Zinn
"This marvelous voyage of personal discovery provides a vivid portrait of the richness and diversity of Latin America, its wonders and suffering, the courage and irrepressible spirit of its people, as they are revealed to a thoughtful and sensitive eye during the most exciting and hopeful decade since the European conquests. It is an enthralling account, stimulating and provocative." -- Noam Chomsky
"This superb travel memoir has the benefit of an appealingly honest, intelligent, and reliable narrator, whose humorous self-scrutiny and compassionate insights bridge two worlds with extraordinary tact. I found it engrossing, moving, and compulsively readable." -- Phillip Lopate
"Boudin has a pitch-perfect ear for the cadences that make up daily life in a region grappling with change. More than a well-written and clear-eyed guide to the efforts of yet another generation of Latin American leaders and activists trying to chart their own way, it's a handbook for
estadounidenses on how to listen to and learn from those below the Rio Grande who also call themselves Americans." -- Greg Grandin, author of
Empire's Workshop"A compelling firsthand account of the unregulated greed, social neglect, and deliberate misrule that has provoked so many Latin Americans to demand a better life for themselves and their children. Boudin's vivid reports are filled with memorable characters whose stories capture the tragedies and the promise of this vast region." -- John H. Coatsworth, director, Institute of Latin American Studies, Columbia University
"This is not Latin American for Yuppies, which shouldn't be much of a surprise, knowing the lineage. It's cheap beer, fried plantains, long dusty bus rides, radical politics, the repeated kindness of desperately poor people sharing what they have with an outsider, and Chesa Boudin's eagerness to share what he's seeing and what he's feeling, with sympathy and empathy -- as he tries to sort it all out. There's much to learn in this book." -- Seymour Hersh, the
New Yorker
