Crossing the Border

In most corners, there’s something missing from the current and seemingly endless debate over illegal immigration: Brown faces. Stories of struggle. Real insight into the lives of the people involved in this crisis.

But not in Terry Greene Sterling’s new book, which author Paul Perry has referred to as “the twenty-first century’s [The] Grapes of Wrath.” In Illegal: Life and Death in Arizona’s Immigration War Zone, Sterling, a celebrated local journalist and former New Times staff writer, places the undocumented people front and center in a series of profiles that humanize an issue that’s becoming white noise for most of the rest of us.

Sterling manipulates her reader in the kindest possible way: By introducing us to beleaguered people it’s impossible not to care about, then describing the abuse – and death – that are simple facts of their lives as “illegals.” She allows us to find for ourselves the pointlessness of cruel laws and to despise the villains who create and support them.

Thu., July 29, 7 p.m., 2010