A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century

Product Description

“No matter your politics or home country this will change how you think about the movement of people between poor and rich countries…one of the best books on immigration written in a generation.” –Matthew Desmond, author of EvictedThe 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 in with Tita Comodas and her family in the Manila slums thirty years ago, he didn't expect to make lifelong friends. Nor did he expect to spend decades reporting on Tita, her husband, siblings, and children, as they came to embody the stunning rise of global migration. In his new book, DeParle paints an intimate portrait of an unforgettable family across three generations that dramatizes how the international movement of labor has reordered 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.

Review

“This is the best book on immigration I've read. Three decades ago, Jason DeParle moved into the Manila slums with the family. He chronicles their immigration story but through it tells the larger tale of what it all means. His empathy, intelligence and good writing shine through every page.”

—Fareed Zakaria

“A sweeping, deeply reported tale of international migration that hopscotches from the Philippines through the Middle East, Europe and eventually the United States . . . DeParle’s understanding of migration is refreshingly cleareyed and nuanced.”

—The New York Times”[A] riveting multigenerational tale of one Filipino family dispersing across the globe, from Manila to Abu Dhabi to Galveston, Tex., and so many places in between…DeParle’s examination of how the two daughters adapt to U.S. elementary schools, seeking to become more all-American than the Americans, even as their parents find solace in Texas’s Filipino immigrant networks, is a minor classic of the assimilation experience….The book is packed with insights.”

—The Washington Post

“This is epic reporting, nonfiction on a whole other level. One of the nation’s most committed immersive journalists, Jason DeParle spent thirty years with a single family whose lives were defined by immigration, traveling to several countries and seeing children grow up and have children of their own. No matter your politics or home country, 
A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves will change how you think about the movement of people between poor and rich countries. Intimate narratives entwine with sweeping, global accounts to produce one of the best books on immigration written in a generation.”
—Matthew Desmond, author of Evicted

“An intelligent, compassionate analysis of the economic, political, and cultural ramifications of global migration.”

—The Christian Science Monitor”A remarkable book . . . DeParle offers us a brisk history of immigration and immigration policy and wise reflections on contemporary migration.”

—The Boston Globe
“This years-in-the-making, panoramic story