Harvest of Empire cover

Harvest of Empire

by Juan González

We are here because you were there.

For you if

you've been asked what to do about immigration and thought: why is no one asking why people are coming?

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González is a journalist and co-founder of Democracy Now!, and Harvest of Empire is the historical argument you've needed: the last 150 years of U.S. intervention in Latin America created every major wave of Latinx migration to the United States. Country by country — Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico — González traces the U.S. investments, backed coups, trade agreements, and proxy wars that destabilized governments and economies, then follows the people those decisions produced across the border. The book doesn't frame immigration as a crisis. It frames it as a consequence. Read this first so you understand the cause before you meet the people the cause created.

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Why it’s here: Punk in making a kitchen the site of rebellion — Tita's cooking becomes the one language her mother can't control or silence. Pedagogical in showing how inherited "duty" polices women's desire generation after generation, and what it costs to break that chain.

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