Beacon Broadside

Tucson Festival of Books: Dispatches from the Borderland

Margaret Regan, author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands, will once again appear at the Tucson Festival of Books. Her appearance at the 2010 festival was broadcast on BookTV; you can watch it on YouTube.

Regan will be a panelist in two different sessions. For "Borderlines," Regan will join Phil Caputo, a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and a novelist (Crossers),and Thomas Cobb, novelist whose Crazy Heart was turned into the Oscar-winning film, for a session on writing about the border. The panel will meet at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, March 12, in the Catalina Room of the UA Student Union.

Regan will also be speaking at 4 p.m., Saturday, in Gallagher Theater in the UA Student Union, in the session "Dispatches from the Borderlands: Human Rights, Personal Stories." Moderated by journalism professor Jay Rochlin, the panel also includes authors Sam Quinones (Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream) and Kathryn Ferguson, Norma Price and Ted Parks (co-authors of Crossing with the Virgin). The session will be broadcast live by CNN's Book TV.

In December, Regan's book was named a winner in the 2010 Southwest Books of the Year Best Reading competition run by the Friends of the Pima County Public Library. Judge Margaret Loghry noted, "All concerned citizens should read this collection to better understand the issues in the borderlands today." The Unitarian Universalist Church also selected The Death of Josseline as a Common Read, to be read and studied by congregations nationwide.

 

Reader's Guide: The Death of Josseline

Margaret Regan's The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands has been praised as, "A keen-eyed perspective of how questionable public policy has resulted in far too much preventable loss of life," (Midwest Book Review) and, "A humane, sensitive, and informative perspective on a current and controversial topic" (Ana Castillo, author of The Guardians). 

The book has been chosen as this year's Common Read by the Unitarian-Universalist Association, and a reader's guide is available on Beacon.org.  Read an excerpt below or at Scribd and get talking about the human stories behind the contentious issue of undocumented immigration. 

You can also read these previous posts at Beacon Broadside by author Margaret Regan, or browse all of our posts on immigration.

A Shallow Grave in the Desert

Fourth of July in the Borderlands: Praying for Rain

An Unsolved Murder, A Wave of Hysteria, and Deaths in the Desert

The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands

An Unsolved Murder, A Wave of Hysteria, and Deaths in the Desert

Today's post is from Margaret Regan, author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands. Read more about Beacon's immigration titles at "Beyond SB1070" on Beacon.org.

Robert Krentz was a modern cowboy. When he patrolled his ranch northeast of Douglas, he rode an ATV, not a horse. No matter. A rancher was a rancher and Krentz's family had run cattle on this 35,000-spread since 1907. Krentz had been trying to restore the parched land, and his innovative water system helped convert a portion of it into a wildlife habitat. In 2008, just after its 100th anniversary, the Krentz ranch was inducted into the Arizona Ranching Hall of Fame.

Krentz was a big man, tall and heavy, and, at fifty-eight, prematurely snowy-haired. He was known as a gentle giant, given to helping out needy border crossers in this heavily traveled migrant corridor. They walked his land regularly, and once his house had been broken into. "If they come in and ask for water, I'll still give them water," he told a PBS interviewer back in 1999. "That's just my nature."

Saturday, March 27, 2010, was a cool day for early spring, only 50 degrees or so. Krentz rumbled out on his ATV to check his water lines, his dog trotting along beside him. There'd been some trouble lately in these rural Cochise County grasslands. Residents blamed migrants for a rash of home robberies. And the day before, Krentz's brother Phil had spotted some drug mules on their ranch and called the Border Patrol; agents arrested eight undocumented immigrants and picked up nearly 300 pounds of marijuana.

At some point Saturday, Rob radioed into Phil; over the crackly airwaves Phil heard the words "illegal alien."

That was the last time Rob Krentz's family heard from him. Hours later, his body was found out on his ranch, still on his ATV. He'd been shot multiple times; his dog lay wounded beside him. The death of Robert Krentz changed the conversation about immigration in the United States. The killing made national and even international news. The county sheriff pleaded for calm, noting that the murder was unsolved (it remained unsolved as of July 2010), but that didn't stop anti-immigrant groups from asserting flatly that Krentz had been shot in cold blood by an undocumented immigrant, or felled by a Mexican drug dealer. Angry citizens around the country demanded that the federal government take action.

Fourth of July in the Borderlands: Praying for Rain

The following post is from Margaret Regan, the author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands. Regan's book chronicles firsthand accounts of the militarized borders and the ultimate human struggle and sacrifice to experience the freedom and independence in the United States.

A hot wind swept through the Arizona desert on the first day of July, pushing gray clouds across the sky and carrying the welcoming smell of rain.

The dampness in the air gave some small hope to this parched land. During all of June, it rained not a single drop in southern Arizona. The temperatures spiked above 100 degrees on twenty-two days, including sixteen days in a row during the last two weeks of the month. On one day, June 23, the mercury shot up to 109.  

The region’s powerful summer thunderstorms—the monsoons—haven’t started yet but everyone’s praying for rain. Last week in Tucson, in a traditional celebration on the feast day of San Juan Bautista—St. John the Baptist—on June 24, neighbors carried his statue around on the banks of the dried-up Santa Cruz River, in hopes that the saint would baptize the borderlands. So far, the saint hasn’t answered their prayers.

Link Roundup: Online Conversation Starters

Beacon authors have been collecting laurels lately for their powerful writing and progressive ideas. Here's a sampling from this past week:

The May edition of the Internet Review of Books finds Tucson journalist Margaret Regan's The Death of Josseline to offer "A Desperately Needed Message."

Dr. Danielle Ofri, author of Medicine In Translation, has a stunning "Cases" piece in the Science section of the New York Times.

Finally, a wave of praise for Amie Klempnauer Miller's She Looks Just Like You on the The StrollerDerby blog, which quotes Salon.com's "delightful" interview with the author, plus over on Mombian. Also, ForeWord Reviews in their May/June issue, says: "She Looks Just Like You tells a story that parents from all sorts of 'categories' need to hear." And the June issue of Curve Magazine notes, "Motherhood can be scary for anyone, but when it comes to lesbian, Nonbiological moms-to-be, there was no real guidebook—until now. Miller talks about the excitements and difficulties that come from being the lesbian partner who doesn't give birth."

Link Roundup: Defending Immigrant Rights from Arizona to Manhattan

This past week, Beacon authors have been very active out in the world, putting a human face on immigration and talking topics spanning a wide gamut of social justice issues, including: global population, feminism, consumer choices, education, and so much more. Visit our homepage to see the many books on immigrant rights that Beacon has published. And, if you're in or around Boston, learn more about the May Day March, which will begin on Boston Common at noon on Saturday.

Tucson journalist Margaret Regan takes on Arizona's new immigration law that ignores the escalating number of migrant deaths for the Washington Post's The Political Bookworm.

Danielle Ofri's article "Immigrants, patients have unique stories" is up on CNN.com. Ofri is the author of Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients.

WNBC New York talks to Stacy and Steve Trebing about their successful struggle to save their daughter with a "savoir sibling." The family's moving story is chronicled by author Beth Whitehouse in her new book The Match.

Author Bob Moses champions a constitutional amendment to guarantee quality education, the topic of his forthcoming book Quality Education as a Constitutional Right, in The Nation article about the 50th anniversary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Today marks the 35th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Hear Dana Sachs talk about the nearly 3,000 "supposedly orphaned" children swept into "Operation Babylift" on NHPR's "Word of Mouth."

Fran Hawthorne, author of The Overloaded Liberal, talks to U.S. News & World Report about the environmentally-aware consumer's struggle to make everyday choices.

After Fred Pearce appeared on "The Daily Show" to talk about The Coming Population Crash, the conversation about how women are on track to save the planet continued over at Jezebel. And Andrew Sullivan of "The Daily Dish" linked to Fred's much commented upon interview for Salon.com.

In her excellent piece on "Tea and Sympathy," Jill Lepore mentions historian Alfred F. Young's "The Shoemaker and the Tea Party" in this week's New Yorker.

Margaret Regan: A Shallow Grave in the Desert

Today's post is from Margaret Regan, author of The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona-Mexico Borderlands. Regan appeared on Talk of the Nation yesterday, and you can read an excerpt from her book at Tucson Weekly.

Two weeks ago five young Americans were hiking the trails in the Tumacacori Wilderness in southern Arizona, a few miles north of the Mexican border.

The terrain here is rugged, with rocky pathways snaking through up-and-down canyons in the mountains, and desert cacti ready to pierce a walker’s skin. But the volunteers had a reason to be out trekking this forbidding turf on a winter’s day. They were members of the Tucson activist group No More Deaths, and they were leaving food and water out for the migrants who throng these trails when they slip over the border into the U.S.

Not all of the migrants make it through.

On February 9, the young volunteers, members of the Tucson activist group No More Deaths, were about two miles east of Ruby, a remote ghost town long since abandoned by the miners who once dug their claims here. Loaded down with gallons of water -- each one weighing more than eight pounds -- and boxes of food, they decided to walk down a narrow canyon they had never passed through before.

Suddenly, in the path ahead of them, they saw a shallow grave.

Margaret Regan on the Death of Josseline

Margaret Regan talks about the deaths of immigrants crossing the border into Arizona with Arizona Public Media. 

Click here to watch it.