A funny, empathetic, and formally inventive guide to the U.S. immigration system.
Finding the comedy in coming to America.
Torres Medina, a writer for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, describes his book as “the ultimate guide for any person who is curious about what it’s like to be an immigrant who dares take on the daunting task of leaving it all behind and moving to a country they picked.” Written as a choose-your-own-adventure gamebook, it introduces characters ranging from a tortured French heiress of a jam fortune, to an immigrant who discovers they’ve been an “elite-level athlete” their whole life and never known it, to a student who, when faced with the cost of American tuition, decides to fund their education less than legally, to a semi-autobiographical character who is an improv student with comedy dreams. Using the combination of choices these characters make and the resources available to them, Torres Medina introduces readers to a variety of immigration visas they can apply for, not only articulating their costs, but also the obstacles associated with each type. Although the author lightens the content with well-placed jokes that include footnotes written by an anxious and awkward lawyer named Kevin, his empathy for those attempting to navigate America’s daunting bureaucracy remains the emotional heart of these stories. Torres Medina writes, “That’s the gist of immigrants, by and large. They chose this place. And I believe there is no bigger act of love than willingly choosing something.” This hilarious and heartfelt book is a compassionate ode to those who risk it all to live in America.
A funny, empathetic, and formally inventive guide to the U.S. immigration system.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781419776397
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Abrams Image
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: today
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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