RaveThe New Republic... determined to unravel the many stereotypes that outsiders like Didion have perpetuated about the country, to make room for new insights about the trauma that generations of Salvadorans have endured ... Lovato, who is Salvadoran-American, claims early on that his book seeks to explore the roots of gang violence in El Salvador, but it is about much more than that. Unforgetting covers a lot of ground, jumping between time periods, characters, countries, and even genres ... The book illuminates the depths of violence that have shaped El Salvador ... because Unforgetting is so personal, it has much to add to the conversation on historical memory. The insights Lovato gleans about his own country’s history ultimately allow him \'to understand my family in a more complicated way, one that accommodated both its lightness and its darkness,\' he writes. Much of the book’s power comes from its exploration of Lovato’s own wide-ranging life experiences ... Memoir gives the book an authenticity lacking in works by authors like Didion. He neither judges nor romanticizes the gang members he meets, speaking honestly to their struggles while never absolving them of their often violent behavior ... Lovato’s writing about memory and reconciliation speaks powerfully to a truth that Didion never took the time to really see: that terror is never a given but rather a consequence of how power is wielded in history.
Todd Miller
PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksMiller argues that in order to fully understand US immigration policy, we must go far beyond the borders of the United States itself and much further back in time than the Trump era ... The sheer geographic scope of the book is a feat in and of itself that immediately sets Miller’s book apart from much of the literature on the US-Mexico border ... Another contribution that Miller’s book makes is in outlining the colonial and imperial roots of these processes ... While exploring the deep historical roots of the oppression wrought by the borders of modern nation-states, Miller’s book is also forward facing. Climate change is a central component of the work, echoing the theme of his previous book, Storming the Wall. Climate change, he writes, \'offers the most complete and coherent argument for dissolving our world’s hardened militarized borders and to imagine something new.\' In a world where more people than ever are on the move, this is an urgent, crucial proposal that demands a change not only in policies, but in systems and the oppressive structures that drive them.
