Portraits of Persistence

Portraits of Persistence is a breath of fresh air. Auyero has brought to life a fascinating collection of well-crafted and unique personal accounts to form a richly engaging narrative. I cannot think of any other publication that brings together such high-quality materials building on the tradition of testimonio. This will undoubtedly establish new standards of research into the “everyday” to illuminate the reality of regular peoples’ lives. ~Robert Gay, Connecticut College, author of Lucia: Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman

Through incisive ethnographic narratives, Portraits of Persistence outlines how the broad trends that shape contemporary life in Latin America are revealed in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. Each chapter is a gem, revealing the specificities of multilayered local realities while forming a unified thread to depict what persistence looks and feels like under the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that face people in an unjust world. Portraits of Persistence breaks from the usual academic style while retaining the most powerful features of a classic ethnography. Highly recommended! ~Cecilia Menjívar, UCLA, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Women's Lives in Guatemala

Portraits is an outstanding collection that combines sociological life history with the Latin American tradition of testimonio literature, to provide twelve compelling stories of people navigating the durable and cruel inequalities of our world. Chapters cover the region from the Southern Cone to the US Gulf Coast, showing how individuals confront, adapt, alter, and navigate the macrosocial processes they find themselves in. Forced displacement, the drug economy, urban violence, informal labor, and multiple facets of structural disadvantage provide the context in which people forge ahead, create spaces of agency, and craft their lives, These stories provide neither voyeuristic shock nor breezy inspiration. Rather, in the best ethnographic tradition, they humanize what seems strange, and make understandable what seems inexplicable. ~David Smilde, Tulane University, author of Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism

Rigorously referenced, this is an essential title for collections dedicated to Hispanic and Latine interests. ~Booklist