Welcome to the LA Times Book Club Newsletter.
Hello, readers. I’m Chris Vogner, a cultural critic and avid bookworm. This week, we’re talking about the life of Soldiers and Kings, a harrowing investigation of the smugglers who guide migrants (mostly Central Americans) across Mexico and the deeply empathetic book, which recently won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. We speak to Angeleno Jason de Leon. We also consider recent releases reviewed by Times critics and look at other articles about people who have undertaken difficult border crossings.
De Leon, a professor of anthropology, spent seven years immersing himself in groups of people like the ones depicted in his book. “This is pretty standard for any kind of ethnographic project,” he said. “These are long-term time commitments. So when we started this project, we knew it was going to be long-term.”
At a time when the debate over immigration is more noise than substance, The Soldier and the King exposes readers to real people and real stories. I spoke to de Leon, who is a professor of Chicana, Chicano, and Central American studies in addition to anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, about building trust, the difference between smuggling and human trafficking, and what exactly an anthropologist’s job is. I asked him about it.
We seek to understand the human condition from as many different perspectives as possible.
— Jason de Leon, author of Soldiers and Kings
Jason de Leon writes about his ethnographic study of human smugglers in his book The Soldier and the King.
(Viking)
You spent a lot of time writing this book in quite dangerous conditions. Trust must be an important part of your daily processes.
Yes, you’re dealing with a lot of sketchy people. I had to really trust the people I was working with and writing about. I don’t want to call it blind trust. This is because as you go along, you will learn who to trust and how much to trust. But I find it a little hard to believe that these people will ultimately take care of me. So I had to really try to find the right people that I could spend time with, and people who understood the project and really wanted to show me as much as they could. .
These are people whose lives depend on being able to read a room correctly. So when I step into this space and say, “Hey, I’m an anthropologist, I want to be here, I want to document everything,” they’re pretty sure I’m a threat or not. Must be evaluated quickly. And how much they trust me.
What are some common misconceptions about human smugglers?
90% of the time people seem to confuse human trafficking and smuggling, but they are two completely different things and are used interchangeably. People who are trafficked have it happen against their will. And smuggled people pay someone to take them where they want to go. That is a huge misconception and one that greatly impairs our ability to understand what smuggling is and how it actually works globally.
What role does Los Angeles play in this book?
It shows up in the book in different ways. One of the main men I write about was a Honduran man who settled in Los Angeles after Hurricane Katrina. He ends up joining MS-13 (an international criminal organization). He had a similar experience at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, where he was imprisoned in California, then deported and sent back to Honduras, where he became involved with smugglers. For me, I think there were various moments in the book where Los Angeles comes, in southern Mexico and on the railroad tracks in Honduras.
You have dedicated your life to anthropology. How would you explain this field to someone unfamiliar?
We seek to understand the human condition from as many different perspectives as possible, including ethnographic research, collaboration with modern people, archaeology, and linguistics. All the different things that anthropologists do are attempts to understand humans. We’re really trying to make the familiar strange and the strange familiar. We look at the world from different perspectives as a way to shed light on what’s really going on.
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week in the book
We asked three book reviewers for their favorite books of 2024. The books they chose are:
(Illustration: Julia Schimautz / For The Times. Images: Knopf, Viking, Hogarth)
Times critics select the 15 best books of 2024.
Charles Arrowsmith reviews Anita Felicelli’s story collection How We Know Our Time Travelers. “These 14 miniature crises contain a number of fantastical or science fiction elements, but they are fundamentally an exploration of this stubborn, very human obsession with the impossible. ” Arrowsmith wrote.
Mark Attitakis reviews Kevin Proufer’s new novel, Sleepaway. In this dystopian vision, Atitakis writes, “Instead of exposing humanity to dire danger, humanity is forced into a state of anxiety, like being stuck in the middle of a rickety bridge.”
Jenny Gold writes about the chilling effect of book bans on the sale of children’s books. “In the 2023-24 school year, there were more than 10,000 books banned in public schools, a 200% increase from the previous year,” Gold wrote.
And Gustavo Arellano writes, “From East L.A.’s gang history to a gorgeous coffee table book about the cult classic Blood In Blood Out to a fun fairy tale about late Los Angeles, Southern California… “Recent books by and about Latinas”. Dodgers legend Fernando Valenzuela. ”
intersection
Gregory Nava’s 1983 film follows two brothers who head from Guatemala to Los Angeles.
(Cinema International Films)
The Soldier and the King is one of many books about the dangers and realities of crossing borders. Here are some important ones.
Solito by Javier Zamora: A powerful and poetic memoir about a nine-year-old boy’s harrowing journey from El Salvador to Guatemala, Mexico, and finally the United States.
“The Crossing” by Cormac McCarthy: A passionate prose tale of a boy, a wolf, and his journey to Mexico.
“Crossing the Line: Finding America in the Borderlands” by Sarah Towle: Towle challenges America’s broken immigration system, focusing on human rights trampled in the rubble.
“Signs Preceding the End of the World” by Yuri Herrera: A short story about boundaries as both physical spaces and mental states.
“El Norte” directed by Gregory Nava: I see, this is a movie. But the depiction of a brother and sister leaving Guatemala for Los Angeles and what is lost upon their arrival is both timeless and timely.
That’s all for now. Keep turning the pages.
