A journey around our America A memoir on cycling, immigration, and the Latinoization of the U.S

Deeply troubled by the gathering backlash against Latino immigration in recent years, Mendoza, a Mexican-American academic (Univ. of Minn.) and author (Crossing into America), took his outrage on the road, crossing the continent over five months in 2007 in an attempt to gain insight into the experience of Latinos from shore to shore. Choosing a bike over a car was a way to get in shape during his sabbatical year, though cycling also proved a key to gaining trust among the people he needed to meet: the often shunned, invisible, disenfranchised immigrant workers who made the shops, factories, fields, mines, and dairies run every day. From Santa Cruz, Calif., he headed northward in July, toward Eugene, Ore., then due east, hitting his midway point of Minneapolis six weeks later. Then, from Chicago and Detroit he traveled to Boston and New York, then pressing down the coast to Florida and across to Houston, Tex., where his family lived. He offers reflections from his blog on the personal toll the arduous journey took, and records interviews with many of the locals he met and who offered him acts of kindness. The snapshots of these myriad lives are relevant and moving. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Riding his bike more than 8000 miles, literally around the United States-that's how Mendoza (coeditor, Crossing into America: The New Literature of Immigration) spent his sabbatical from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, where he chairs the Department of Chicano Studies. His purpose: to document his discussions with Latin@s (his term for people of Latin American descent) about their experiences in 21st-century America. Mendoza divides the book into four parts: Preparation, The Start of a Journey, Redeparture, and Redefining the Borderlands. Throughout, he introduces the reader to Latin@s from both small towns and big cities, discussing their livelihoods, families, and the chances they have taken. He includes references to newspaper articles addressing the ongoing national and local immigration debates as well as snippets from the blog he maintained during his journey. Mendoza engages the reader and humanizes the politically charged immigration debate, revealing that the experiences of Latin@s in the United States are as diverse as the places they came from and have traveled to. -VERDICT This engaging book will be enjoyed by those studying the U.S. Latin@ experience as well as by readers of travel memoir and adventures.-Susan E. Montgomery, Rollins Coll. Lib., Winter Park, FL (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.