What Side Are You on?

“Brilliant, moving, and wholly unique…. Wilson and Lucero have produced a groundbreaking book that mixes memoir, testimonio, political science, and history to tell the complex story of an Indigenous man’s journey through the civil rights era, the Cold War, and America’s war on undocumented migrants along the US-Mexico border.”–Jason De León, author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling

“Illuminating … . shed[s] valuable light on the deep roots of the violence and injustice that reflect and fuel border militarization and the fight against criminalized immigration … . [helps] readers to see beyond mainstream framings of migration and border politics, provoking important questions about international mobility, humanitarianism, and solidarity, while pointing the way toward a more just world.”–NACLA Report on the Americas

“Wilson’s commitment inspires, and the account is enriched by Lucero’s meditations on history and sovereignty, including passages exploring how the U.S. draws and enforces physical and metaphorical boundaries between its ” ‘civilization’ and [the] ‘merciless savagery’” of both Mexico and Native lands. It’s a rewarding chronicle of a remarkable life.“–Publishers Weekly

Michael Steven Wilson (Tohono O’odham) is a human rights activist, US military retiree, and film documentarian. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Jose Antonio Lucero is chair and professor in the Comparative History of Ideas Department at the University of Washington, Seattle and holds a joint appointment in the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.