From the Bookshelves . . .Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum

Michele Waslin and Carol Cleaveland have a forthcoming book, Private Violence: Latin American Women and the Struggle for Asylum.

The book presents the stories of 46 women from Central America who were forced to flee their homes because of horrific domestic or gang violence and are in the midst of the asylum process in the United States. The book tells the women’s histories prior to crossing the border, and the legal strategies they use to convince immigration judges that rape and other forms of “private violence” should merit asylum despite laws built on Cold War era assumptions that persecution occurs in the public sphere by state actors. The book also relies on interviews with immigration judges and attorneys and court observations.

The book will be published by NYU Press on October 15, 2024.

Private Violence can be pre-ordered through NYU Press here. 

IE