Publishers Weekly
★ 06/10/2019
In this captivating story, journalist DeParle (American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare) follows three generations of a Filipino family whose lives have been profoundly shaped by migration. The book begins in a shantytown in Manila in the 1980s, where the reader meets Tita and Emet Comodas, who spent nearly 20 years of their married life apart as Emet “tried his luck” in the Middle East to lift them out of poverty and send their daughter Rosalie (born in 1971) to nursing school. Rosalie, in turn, became an overseas worker—in the Middle East and then Texas—and married one; their three children were initially raised mostly by the family in Manila. As the family is reunited in Texas in 2012, when the children are 5, 7, and 9, the narrative shifts to encompass their adjustment to a new country and to living with their parents. DeParle excels in both intimate details and sweeping scale, showing how the Comodases’ experiences illuminate broader phenomena, such as the feminization of migration, technology’s impact on assimilation and the maintenance of far-flung networks, and the role that overseas remittance plays in quality of life in former colonies. The book also ably relates the politics of immigration starting in the 1960s. This well-crafted story personalizes the questions and trends surrounding global migration in moving and thought-provoking fashion. Agent: Chuck Verrill, Darhansoff and Verrill. (Aug.)
From the Publisher
"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 follows the Portagana family from the slums of Manila across four continents. A humane epic of real people in search of better lives.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
"Remarkable...[A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves] will leave you better understanding how the world works today and where we’re likely headed."
—Washington Monthly
"DeParle humanizes the politics of migration and the powerful forces of assimilation...immigration may be a hot button issue today, but in his profoundly wise, insightful, and eloquent book, DeParle goes behind sloganeering and conveys the vast and tangled obstacle course navigated by those who dream of lifting their families out of poverty."
—The National Book Review
"[An] ambitious and successful book . . . DeParle has a frank, amiable and plain-spoken virtuosity as a writer."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"An admirably sober and sympathetic treatment of a topic that right now evokes the worst impulses in many Americans…. What makes DeParle’s book stand out is its focus on women immigrants….he has leveraged his unusually close-up access to trace a fascinating narrative of female empowerment against the merciless machine of globalization."
—Texas Monthly
“DeParle delivers a remarkably creative, enlightening, and empathetic book about international migration’s personal and public impact…[a] well-informed analysis, of immigration’s history, benefits, and downsides, demonstrating his mastery of the subject.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“[A] captivating story….DeParle excels in both intimate details and sweeping scale…This well-crafted story personalizes the questions and trends surrounding global migration in moving and thought-provoking fashion.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A remarkably intimate look at migration’s impact on both a single family and the global community.”
—Booklist (starred review)
“Jason DeParle has captured the power and peril of immigration—through the story of one family, scattered across the planet, working in hospitals, cruise ships and hotel bathrooms near you. A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves is an exceptional accomplishment: sweeping, vivid and complicated in all the right ways. Just when we are about to lose hope, there is a moment of beauty or humor or grace that saves us from despair.”
—Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World
“A Good Provider Is One Who Leaves sets a new standard in the literature of migration—heart-melting in the intimacy of the Portagana family story across generations and continents and at the same time profound in its connection of that story to the broader phenomenon. Eloquence on every page.”
—Tom Gjelten, NPR Correspondent and author of A Nation of Nations
"It's hard to imagine a book better timed; after decades of work, Jason DeParle delivers this masterpiece of reporting and insight at precisely the moment when America is making the most basic decisions about immigration. His story-telling is so vivid, granular and alive that, once you've read it, immigration can never be a bumper-sticker controversy again. An American classic."
—Bill McKibben, author of Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2019-08-19
A powerful examination of one of the day's most important topics: global migration.
In many ways, the latest from New York Times reporter DeParle (American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare, 2004), a George Polk Award winner, is a summary effort of the past three decades of his core research that began in the Philippines when he was a much younger reporter launching his career. Some of the close relationships he forged during his time there became lifelong friendships—and helped lead to this crucial and timely volume about the increasingly explosive and controversial phenomenon of global migration. Three decades ago, when the author was reporting on the poverty of the shantytowns of Manila, he met Tita Comodas, who reluctantly took him in as a boarder. Unable to provide for his family, Emet, Tita's husband, was forced to take a job abroad in Saudi Arabia, and he spent the next 20 years living far from his loved ones in order to send remittances home and afford his children a higher standard of life. Identifying the book's title as the family mantra, DeParle focuses on their daughter, Rosalie, then a 15-year-old studying nursing. He follows her through the years as she graduated and took nursing jobs abroad, eventually arriving in Galveston, Texas, and her own lifelong dream fulfilled: a job in the U.S. Moving in and out of the narrative of Rosalie's journey, the author chronicles her daily struggles, tying them to the bigger picture of migration movements and globalism as well as the economic, political, and cultural particulars of immigration in North America. DeParle also weighs in on immigration in the European Union while expanding on the economic effects of family remittances on a national and global scale. Giving a human face to the issue of immigration, the author does a great service to his readers and his subjects.
A gorgeously written, uniquely insightful, and evenly critical volume that hits every talking point on immigration today.
