"When Jason DeParle moved in with Tita Comodas in the Manila slums thirty years ago, he didn't expect to make a lifelong friend. Nor did he expect to spend decades reporting on her family--husband, children, and siblings--as they came to embody the stunning rise of global migration. In A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves, DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family across three generations, as migration reorders economics, politics, and culture across the world. At the heart of the story is Rosalie, Tita's middle child, who escapes poverty by becoming a nurse, and lands jobs in Jeddah, Abu Dhabi and, finally, Texas--joining the record forty-four million immigrants in the United States. Migration touches every aspect of global life. It pumps billions in remittances into poor villages, fuels Western populism, powers Silicon Valley, sustains American health care, and brings one hundred languages to the Des Moines public schools. One in four children in the United States is an immigrant or the child of one. With no issue in American life so polarizing, DeParle expertly weaves between the personal and panoramic perspectives. Reunited with their children after years apart, Rosalie and her husband struggle to be parents, as their children try to find their place in a place they don't know. Ordinary and extraordinary at once, their journey is a twenty-first-century classic, rendered in gripping detail"-- Provided by publisher.
One of The Washington Post 's 10 Best Books of the Year "A remarkable book...indispensable."— The Boston Globe "A sweeping, deeply reported tale of international migration...DeParle's understanding of migration is refreshingly clear-eyed and nuanced." —The New York Times "This is epic reporting, nonfiction on a whole other level...One of the best books on immigration written in a generation."—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted The definitive chronicle of our new age of global migration, told through the multi-generational saga of a Filipino family, by a veteran New York Times reporter and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. When Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with Tita Comodas and her family three decades ago, he never imagined his reporting on them would span three generations and turn into the defining chronicle of a new age—the age of global migration. In a monumental book that gives new meaning to "immersion journalism," DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family as they endure years of sacrifice and separation, willing themselves out of shantytown poverty into a new global middle class. At the heart of the story is Tita's daughter, Rosalie. Beating the odds, she struggles through nursing school and works her way across the Middle East until a Texas hospital fulfills her dreams with a job offer in the States. Migration is changing the world—reordering politics, economics, and cultures across the globe. With nearly 45 million immigrants in the United States, few issues are as polarizing. But if the politics of immigration is broken, immigration itself—tens of millions of people gathered from every corner of the globe—remains an underappreciated American success. Expertly combining the personal and panoramic, DeParle presents a family saga and a global phenomenon. Restarting her life in Galveston, Rosalie brings her reluctant husband and three young children with whom she has rarely lived. They must learn to become a family, even as they learn a new country. Ordinary and extraordinary at once, their journey is a twenty-first-century classic, rendered in gripping detail.
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