{"title":"Beln Fernndez","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"inside-siglo-xxi-book-belen-fernndez-9781682193556","title":"Inside Siglo XXI","description":"Much has been written In English about the experiences and treatment of immigrants from south of the Rio Grande once they have entered the United States. But this account, by the itinerant, effervescent and highly original journalist Belén Fernández, offers a different and wholly original take.   Belén Fernández shows us what life is like for would-be migrants, not just from the Mexican side of the border but inside Siglo XXI, the notorious migrant detention center in the south of the country.   Journalists are prohibited from entering Siglo XXI; Fernández only gained access because she herself was detained as a result of faulty paperwork when she attempted to return to the US to renew her passport. Once inside the facility, Fernández was able to speak with detained women from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, Bangladesh, and beyond. Their stories, detailing the hardships that prompted them to leave their homes, and the dangers they have experienced on an often-tortuous journey north, form the core of this unique book. The companionship and support they offer to Fernández, whose antipathy to returning to the United States, the country they are desperate to enter, is a source of bemusement and perplexity, demonstrates a spirited generosity that is deeply moving.   In the end, the Siglo XXI center emerges as a strikingly precise metaphor for a 21st century in which poor people, effectively imprisoned by American political and economic policies, nevertheless display astonishing resilience.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49742568620305,"sku":"NGR9781682193556","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50145858650385,"sku":"CIN1682193551VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50388733395217,"sku":"CIN1682193551G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51046457213201,"sku":"NIN9781682193556","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52345117540625,"sku":"NLS9781682193556","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1682193551.jpg?v=1751409737"},{"product_id":"exile-book-belen-fernndez-9781949017175","title":"Exile","description":"\u003cb\u003eAt 21, Bel n left the U.S. and didn't look back. Alone, far off the beaten path in places like Syria and Tajikstan, she confronts violence, lechery, and places where it's hard to find a good glass of wine, and reflects on what it means to be an American in a largely American-made mess of a world. \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e After growing up in Washington, D.C. and Texas, and then attending Columbia University in New York, Bel n Fern ndez ended up in a state of self-imposed exile from the United States. From trekking--through Europe, the Middle East, Morocco, and Latin America--to packing avocados in southern Spain, to marrying a Palestinian-Lebanese man, to witnessing the violent aftermath of the 2009 coup in Honduras, the international travel allowed her by an American passport has, ironically, given her a direct view of the devastating consequences of U.S. machinations worldwide. For some years Fern ndez survived thanks to the generosity of strangers who picked her up hitchhiking, fed her, and offered accommodations; then she discovered people would pay her for her powerful, unfiltered journalism, enabling--as of the present moment--continued survival. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e In just a few short years of publishing her observations on world politics and writing from places as varied as Lebanon, Italy, Uzbekistan, Syria, Mexico, Turkey, Honduras, and Iran, Bel n Fern ndez has earned a place alongside Martha Gellhorn and Susan Sontag as one of the most trenchant observers of American actions abroad.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50097439244561,"sku":"CIN1949017176VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51059657376017,"sku":"NIN9781949017175","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52672481984785,"sku":"NLS9781949017175","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53264258760977,"sku":"CIN1949017176A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1949017176.jpg?v=1750727651"},{"product_id":"checkpoint-zipolite-book-belen-fernndez-9781682193068","title":"Checkpoint Zipolite","description":"“When I first committed to three full months in El Salvador, the feeling that I was signing up for the equivalent of marriage and reproduction was assuaged only by the awareness that, come March 2020, I’d be dashing around Mexico before flying to Istanbul and resuming freneticism in that hemisphere. Little did I know that the scribbled itinerary would never come to fruition, and that I’d only get as far as the coastal village of Zipolite in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, where March 13-25 would turn into March 13 until further notice.”   Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Belén Fernández had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.   This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico’s only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50399938838801,"sku":"CIN1682193063G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51045990760721,"sku":"NIN9781682193068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52538399162641,"sku":"NLS9781682193068","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1682193063.jpg?v=1750800371"},{"product_id":"darien-gap-book-beln-fernndez-9781978842083","title":"The Darien Gap","description":"The narrow DariÉn Gap, the only land bridge connecting South and Central America, encompasses a spectacularly hostile jungle, covered in steep mountains, dense rainforests, and flood-prone marshes. Known in Spanish as el infierno verde, or “the green hell,” it is one of the most inhospitable places in the world. Its terrain is too treacherous for roads, yet hundreds of thousands of refuge seekers contend with its horrors every year in the hopes of reaching the United States, still some three thousand miles away. And of the countless who set out for the border, an untold number never arrive.     In this book, journalist BelÉn FernÁndez visits the DariÉn Gap to report on the dehumanizing and deadly stretch of land that has become a mass graveyard for migrants. FernÁndez’s travels bring her into contact with refuge seekers, people smugglers, law enforcement officials, and many more whose stories bring life to a place overwhelmingly associated with death. Combining history, on-the-ground reporting, travelogue, memoir, and searing politico-economic analysis, she shines light on a largely made-in-the-USA crisis that has come to define our modern era.     Engrossing and heartrending, The DariÉn Gap is a poignant and compassionate indictment of structural inequality and institutionalized inhumanity in a world where the have-nots must risk death for a chance at a better life-or any life at all.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51627049877777,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51627050139921,"sku":"NGR9781978842083","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51878952763665,"sku":"NIN9781978842083","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52997357175057,"sku":"CIN1978842082VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1978842082.jpg?v=1754893978"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-beln-fernndez.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}