Cheap Bastard's Guide to San Francisco details endless free and inexpensive opportunities available in the City by the Bay from theater, concerts, and museums to wine tastings, yoga classes, haircuts, and massages--for native and visiting cheapskates alike. Written in a fun, humorous tone, this unique guide offers sound advice on how to live the good life on the cheap!
The deeply reported story of identical twin brothers who escape El Salvador's violence to build new lives in California--fighting to survive, to stay, and to belong. In this urgent chronicle of contemporary immigration, journalist Lauren Markham follows the seventeen-year-old Flores twins as they make their harrowing journey across the Rio Grande and the Texas desert, into the hands of immigration authorities, and from there to their estranged older brother's custody in Oakland, CA. Soon these unaccompanied minors are navigating a new school in a new language, working to pay down their mounting coyote debt, and facing their day in immigration court, while also encountering the triumphs and pitfalls of life as American teenagers--girls, grades, Facebook--with only each other for support
Exploring the complex relationship between historical migration narratives and contemporary attitudes towards migrants, the book delves into how past valorization influences present exclusion and demonization. Lauren Markham's firsthand account from Greece, amidst the burning of a refugee camp, reveals the multifaceted struggles faced by migrants and the societal myths that shape perceptions of them. Through a blend of reporting, history, and personal reflection, it highlights the predictive power of migration stories in understanding our current realities and future implications.