Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration
Sam Quinones's first book, True Tales From Another Mexico, was acclaimed for the way it peered into the corners of that country for its larger truths and complexities. Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream, Quinones's second collection of nonfiction tales, does the same for one of the most important issues of our times: the migration of Mexicans to the United States.
Quinones has covered the world of Mexican immigrants for the last thirteen years--from Chicago to Oaxaca, Michoacan to southeast Los Angeles, Tijuana to Texas. Along the way, he has uncovered stories that help illuminate all that Mexicans seek when they come north, how they change their new country, and are changed by it.
Here are the stories of the Henry Ford of velvet painting in Ciudad Juarez, the emergence of opera in Tijuana, the bizarre goings-on in the L.A. suburb of South Gate, and of the drug-addled colonies of Old World German Mennonites in Chihuahua. Through it all winds the tale of Delfino Juarez, a young construction worker, and modern-day Huckleberry Finn, who had to leave his village to change it.
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"Sam Quinones has produced a sublime collection. . . . "Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream" [is] must reading for anyone seriously interested in the issue of immigration."
"[Quinones'] gift for storytelling brings the Mexican mindset to life and provides important cultural and economic context . . . the rich picture evoked overall is fascinating."
"Where others see unremarkable immigrants, Quinones finds gold . . . he has filed the best dispatches about Mexican migration and its effects on the United States and Mexico, bar none."
"Quinones' book humanizes a political issue that has become sloganized into meaninglessness . . . [he]delves deeply and with rich and illustrative detail into the cultural ramifications of our shaky borders."
"This book illuminates individual lives in a historic movement and muses on the nature of the movement . . . scrupulously researched . . . infused with life and spirit and affection . . . Quinones is a hell of a storyteller."
." . . a keen look at the migrant economy . . . [in] nine skillful, moving stories. Quinones layers with the sociological, economic, and historical context of 60 years of immigration . . . [in these] very fine pieces of literary journalism."
"This book humanizes the immigration issue . . . by focusing on in-depth profiles of migrants on both sides of the border and telling their tales with empathy and a novelist's eye for character, narrative structure, and psychological detail."
