Pulitzer winner Nazario to speak at IU Kokomo
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario will visit Indiana University Kokomo Nov. 13 and 14 to discuss the writing of her book Enrique's Journey and related issues of immigration. She will present a free public lecture on Nov. 13 at 7 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.
"We welcome community members to join us in hearing this outstanding guest speaker and discussing some very timely topics in public life in the United States," said IUK Chancellor Ruth Person.
Selected for IU Kokomo's fall 2006 common reading program, Enrique's Journey is an expanded version of a feature series Nazario originally wrote for the Los Angeles Times. The series won several awards, including the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
In the book, Nazario describes the harrowing journey that an estimated 48,000 immigrant children take each year to enter the United States illegally from Central America and Mexico. Nazario physically recreated one Honduran teenager's 12,000-mile sojourn to reunite with his mother in North Carolina. Like her subject, Nazario rode the tops of trains and risked robbery, rape and other dangers along the way. The author spent another year confirming Enrique's story with his family, people he met on the way, other immigrants and immigration authorities.
HBO has purchased Enrique's Journey and is making it into a six-part miniseries.
Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Sciame-Giesecke called Enrique's Journey "a must-read to truly understand the complexities of immigration issues" and a powerful vehicle for IUK's first common reading program. Hundreds of IUK freshmen have read the book and are discussing it in classes this fall. Sciame-Giesecke said the book was chosen, in part, because immigration is an increasingly local issue that IUK graduates will face in their communities and careers.
The U.S. Naturalization and Immigration Service estimates that some 850,000 people now enter the United States illegally each year -- more than double the number in the 1980s and early 1990s. Of the estimated 12 million illegals in the United States now, more than two-thirds come from Mexico and a few Central American countries.
"We want to explore a variety of perspectives on this issue, so eventually students can begin to articulate solutions and see how immigration affects local communities," Sciame-Giesecke said.
Copies of Enrique's Journey (Random House, Inc., 2006) are available through the IUK Bookstore.
