The great escape : a true story of forced labor and immigrant dreams in America / Saket Soni.
"In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000 dollars each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape; their march on foot to Washington, DC; and their 31-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause"-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9781643750088
- ISBN: 1643750089
- Physical Description: 352 pages ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, [2023]
Content descriptions
Bibliography, etc. Note: | Includes bibliographical references. |
Formatted Contents Note: | Dreams -- Man camp -- Escape -- Truth march -- Hunted -- Faith -- Epilogue: forgetting. |
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Available copies
- 5 of 5 copies available at Missouri Evergreen. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at North Kansas City.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 5 total copies.
Show Only Available Copies
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
North Kansas City Public Library | 331.11 SONI 2023 (Text) | 0001012503006 | Nonfiction | Available | - |
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The Great Escape : A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America
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Summary
The Great Escape : A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America
A New York Times Notable Book of 2023 Shortlisted for the 2023 Moore Prize The astonishing story of immigrants lured to the United States from India and trapped in forced labor--an "eye-opening" "must-read" told by the visionary labor leader who engineered their escape and set them on a path to citizenship ( The New York Times Book Review ). â In late 2006, Saket Soni, a twenty-eight-year-old Indian-born community organizer, received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker in Mississippi. He was one of five hundred men trapped in squalid Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Recruiters had promised them good jobs and green cards. The men had scraped up $20,000 each for this "opportunity" to rebuild hurricane-wrecked oil rigs, leaving their families in impossible debt. During a series of clandestine meetings, Soni and the workers devised a bold plan. In The Great Escape, Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape, their march on foot to Washington, DC, and their twenty-three-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause. Along the way, ICE agents try to deport the men, company officials work to discredit them, and politicians avert their eyes. But none of this shakes the workers' determination to win their dignity and keep their promises to their families. Weaving a deeply personal journey with a riveting tale of twenty-first-century forced labor, Soni takes us into the lives of the immigrant workers the United States increasingly relies on to rebuild after climate disasters. The Great Escape is the gripping story of one of the largest human trafficking cases in modern American history--and the workers' heroic journey for justice.