Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

Like a river from its source, Nelson (anthropology, Univ. of North Texas) and Curran, a journalist, trace migrants' voyages from the far reaches of Asia and Africa through South and Central America and into North America. The US is the ultimate goal. The authors emphasize the harshness of the journey and the ways in which US immigration policies reverberate through the regions and countries these migrants traverse. Those policies intersect with local conditions to produce a shadow travel industry whose agents harbor an unpredictable mix of ruthlessness and compassion. The combination of an anthropology professor and a journalist as joint authors helps produce a brisk narrative that attends to both people and places and to the ever-shifting relations between the two. That combination of disciplines also provides an especially good mix of in-depth migrant profiles and more episodic attention to the many different kinds of people who move through, or live along, migration routes. The discussion is nicely up to date, analyzing the effects of both the Trump administration and the uncertain shifts under the Biden administration. This is an excellent book for all audiences and deserves consideration for college and graduate-level classes.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

Sojoyner (Univ. of California, Irvine) has written a creative, intimate ethnography centering on Marley, a charismatic and smart teen but reluctant protagonist. Sojoyner had to earn Marley's trust through various library workshops. The result is a gripping, up-close portrait of how the carceral state in LA makes Black life so precarious. Readers learn how Marley navigates and negotiates housing, education, health care, the nonprofit sector, and juvenile detention facilities. No victim, Marley remains committed to improving his LA community through organizing, education, and collective resistance, "embod[ying] both the spirit of Black freedom and the angst of Black vulnerability within the carceral state" (p. 4). Instead of chapters, Sojoyner organizes the book as five albums, each with two sides (A and B). Side A includes the ethnography, with stories of joy and pain, love and loss, and hope and hopelessness. Side B incorporates history, policy analysis, and theory. "The beauty of [each] album is the interplay between the [emotional] A side and the [contemplative] B side" (p. 6). This approach is certainly a risk but one that pays off. This innovative, intimate book examines Marley's joy and pain as he encounters a web of precarity created by housing, education, health care, and social services.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.