A riveting, kaleidoscopic portrait of the American compulsion toward cruelty and our power to subvert it from an award-winning contributor to The Guardian and The New York Times.
In How to Look Away, Daniel Pena explores how fringe elements of his Texas childhood-AM radio, conspiracy theories, Post-Cold War paranoia-came to dominate the American political discourse and contributed to our extreme tolerance of human rights abuses against migrants from Latin America and elsewhere. He asks- What compels us to look away from these abuses? And how do we wake ourselves into action?
These evocative essays braid journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir, roaming from the vestigial Comanche War battlefields of his native Austin, to the black markets of Mexico City, to the home of a cartel hitman's family doomed to live in the unglamorous aftermath of his crimes. Writing from both Mexico and the United States, Daniel Pena reflects on two childhood fears- demons and the death penalty. Or the answer to the question, ""Do you ever really belong to yourself?"" A question that serves as the looking glass through which Pena meditates on American citizenship and the kinds of people we are willing to disappear in the name of the American project.
How to Look Away conjures disquiet and longing beside clarity and hope as it offers a haunting account of the strange bond between two nations, this American moment, and the land upon which our bodies stand.
By:
Daniel Peña Imprint: Random House Inc Country of Publication: United States Dimensions:
Height: 210mm,
Width: 140mm,
Spine: 17mm
Weight: 407g ISBN:9780593596395 ISBN 10: 0593596390 Pages: 272 Publication Date:06 October 2026 Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format:Hardback Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
