Maria Hinojosa and Bill Hing Book Event, Manhattan, October 17, 2024

Maria Hinojosa and Bill Hing on Immigration and Justice in America

Thursday
October 17th
6:30pm

 

McNally Jackson Soho

134 Prince St.

RSVP Required — here

 

Join writers and advocates Maria Hinojosa and Bill Hing for a discussion of immigration and justice in America, and celebrate their respective books: Hinojosa's memoir Once I Was You and Hing's recent work Humanizing Immigration. 

About Once I Was You: The Emmy Award–winning journalist tells the story of immigration in America through her family’s experiences and decades of reporting, painting an unflinching portrait of a country in crisis in this memoir that is “quite simply beautiful, written in Maria Hinojosa’s honest, passionate voice” (BookPage).

Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media—from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the War on Terror and the first detention camps in the US. Bestselling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community.”

In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago. She offers a personal and illuminating account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also sanctioned willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country’s most vulnerable populations—charging us with the broken system we have today.

An urgent call to fellow Americans to open their eyes to the immigration crisis and understand that it affects us all, this honest and heartrending memoir paints a vivid portrait of how we got here and what it means to be a survivor, a feminist, a citizen, and a journalist who owns her voice while striving for the truth.

“Anyone striving to understand and improve this country should read her story.” —Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road

About Humanizing Immigration: First book to argue that immigrant and refugee rights are part of the fight for racial justice; offers a humanitarian approach to reform and abolition. 

Representing non-citizens caught up in what he calls the immigration and enforcement “meat grinder”, Bill Ong Hing witnessed their trauma, arriving at this conclusion: migrants should have the right to free movement across borders—and the right to live free of harassment over immigration status. While ultimately arguing for the abolishment of ICE, Hing advocates for change now.

With 50 years of law practice and litigation, Hing has represented non-citizens—from gang members to asylum seekers fleeing violence, and from individuals in ICE detention to families at the US southern border seeking refuge. Hing maps out major reforms to the immigration system, making an urgent call for the adoption of a radical, racial justice lens. Readers will understand the root causes of migration and our country’s culpability in contributing to those causes.

"Incisive and compelling, reflecting the painful wisdom and knowledge that Bill Ong Hing has accrued over the course of fifty years.... ”—Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow

“Humanizing Immigration is a stirring call to action, urging readers to act from a place of empathy, not fear.” —Booklist

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