Coyotes: A Journey Through the Secret World of America's Illegal Aliens

By William Moorcroft

Book Overview

To discover what becomes of Mexicans who cross into the United States without a visa, Conover traveled and worked alongside them for more than a year. This is the chronicle of his journey.

"Ted Conover has written a book about the Mexican poor that is at once intimate and epic. Coyotes is travel literature, social protest, and affirmation. I can compare this book to the best of George Orwell's journeys to the heart of poverty." --Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown and Hunger of Memory

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394755189
• ISBN13: 9780394755182
• Release Date: August 1987
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Fantastic work

I am a bilingual teacher living and working among recent immigrants to the US, and I found this book very enlightening and well written. This book spoke directly to my heart.

Crossing the border

"Coyotes" is the name given by Mexicans to the men who smuggle them into the US and transport them illegally within the US. Traveling with Mexican farm workers, writer Ted Conover crossed twice into the US. He worked with them, picking oranges in Arizona, and drove with them to farm jobs and harvests in Idaho and Florida. Conover writes with a clear eye and doesn't disguise his feelings for his subject matter. He is able to...

REAL LIFE DRAMA AND ADVENTURE

Having recently read NEWJACK: GUARDING SING SING, I was motivated to look into other Conover works. The impression he left with Newjack was to be reinforced by the flawless COYOTES. Conover, the authour, goes where no American would dare. He befriends and lives along side Mexican immigrants who cross the border every year to find agricultural jobs. He details several occassions of crossing the border, a series of hardships...

Moving & Thought Provoking

This book was both moving & thought provoking as it explains just a few illegal immigration stories. What you realize by the end of the book is that these are more than stories...these are people's lives. Filled with all the feeling and emotion that REAL PEOPLE experience, the reader comes to know that these experiences aren't just another immigration story filled with all its hardships and obstacles. It's about loss,...

Exciting and suspenseful.

Conover travels with various groups of illegal immigrants and immerses himself in their world. His firsthand accounts cover an impressively broad set of immigrant experiences--the small Mexican towns filled with adventure-seeking youth, journeys to the border, negotiations with smugglers, run-ins with police, finding work in the U.S., and adjusting to a new life. Through it all, Conover maintains his point of view as a...