Summary and Reviews of Soldiers and Kings by Jason De León

Media Reviews

Los Angeles Times A unique read that emerges from seven years of research and firsthand experiences lived by the author amidst smugglers, or 'guías,' on the U.S.-Mexico border…De León offers a glimpse into a world rarely seen or understood.

New York Times A rare inside look at human smuggling on the border … Smuggling, [De León] says, 'is not the problem.' But as his own book memorably recounts, in a world with no shortage of problems, it's nevertheless one of them.

Orange County Register UCLA anthropology professor De León embedded with a group of coyotes, or migrant guides, over the course of several years to study the people behind the industry of human smuggling. His book seeks to dispel stereotypes about those involved with moving migrants across Mexico.

The Boston Globe This anthropological deep dive with an unmistakably human (and humane) voice is the result of seven years embedded with smugglers moving migrants across Mexico. Without fear, favor, or judgment, De León honors his subject's complexity, neither sentimentalizing nor condemning.

The New Republic The book's great virtue is in its close attention to the individual lives of its small group of central characters…toggling between the macro and the micro: the globe-spanning, incomprehensibly vast forces that have brought these smugglers' lives into being, as well as their own individual struggles to make something of what the world has made of them.

Time Magazine For seven years, de León tracked the lives of both migrants crossing the border and the coyotes who shepherded them. He unveils a profoundly intimate account of their world—of the work, the terror, and the human connections made on their treacherous journeys. A National Book Award finalist, Soldiers and Kings seeks to buck the dangerous stereotypes that are often associated with migrants and smugglers, and instead, shows their fully nuanced stories.

Booklist Anthropologist and MacArthur fellow De Leon offers a staggering view of the people who help move asylum seekers. His conversations with participants in a vast migration put human faces to a shadowy concept, and his story is illuminating and often heartrending in its telling.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review) A harrowing account of the work of human smugglers in bringing aspirational immigrants to America's southern border...[and] an exemplary ethnography of central importance to any discussion of immigration policy or reform.

 Matthew Desmond, Pulitzer Prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Evicted and Poverty, by America This is a real one. A work of extraordinary reportage and compassion, Soldiers and Kings takes us deep inside the lives of smugglers guiding desperate migrants across Latin America. One breathtaking scene follows another, rendered in vibrant, unsparing prose documenting grinding poverty and violence, but also young love and redemption. It will shock you, move you, and leave you changed.

 Sandra Cisneros, bestselling author of The House on Mango Street A terrifying journey alongside men who have given up being men and are transformed into "ghosts or demons or dust." De León, our guia, documents their inter-generational tragedies with full complexity. This book ultimately leads one to question what it means to be human, and, as such, to examine what one's own responsibility is to this global issue. An enlightening, frightening, unforgettable read.

Reader Reviews

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