A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle

The story of global migration as a force shaping economies, politics, and cultures around the world is typically told via analysis of data and policies, with a focus on trends rather than individuals. Raised in affluence, educated in the United States, Sister Christine had gained her renown as a critic of Ferdinand Marcos, the American backed dictator who had proclaimed martial law in 1972 and plundered the country with the help of his shoe-happy wife, Imelda. 'Meet me tomorrow morning, outside the Manila Zoo.' Hoping for a quicker audience, I explained that I worked with another nun in her order. 'Call me back a few months,' she snapped. Sister Christine Tan was a friend of the new president, Cory Aquino, and busy on commission rewriting the constitution. Though I didn't say so, I was hoping she would help me move in. I called the Philippines's most famous nun, who lived in a slum called Leveriza. Thirty years ago, I was a young reporter in Manila with an interest in shantytowns, the warrens of scrap-wood shacks that covered a third of the city and much of the developing world. Ordinary and extraordinary at once, their journey is a twenty-first-century classic, rendered in gripping detail. 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. With no issue in American life so polarizing, DeParle expertly weaves between the personal and panoramic perspectives. One in four children in the United States is an immigrant or the child of one.

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.

Migration touches every aspect of global life. 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. 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. 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. 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.

A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves by Jason DeParle