For this show, Claudia Cragg (@ClaudiaCragg) speaks here with Jason DeParle (@JasonDeParle) a veteran reporter for The New York Times, about his new book, A Good Provider is One Who Leaves (Viking, 1st Edition edition, August 20, 2019.
Throughout his career, De Parle has written extensively about poverty and immigration. His book, American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare was a New York Times Notable Book and won the Helen Bernstein Award from the New York City Library. He was an Emerson Fellow at New America. He is a recipient of the George Polk Award and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
De Parle's latest work is powerful examination of one of the day’s most important topics: global migration.

A GOOD PROVIDER IS ONE WHO LEAVES by Jason DeParle is a non-fiction work that deals with "One Family and Migration in the 21st Century." DeParle, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, builds on his decades long acquaintance with Tita Comodas to tell her family's story of life in the Philippines and assimilation by her daughter (Rosalie) and grandchildren in the United States. He was able to immerse himself in their experience – recently (beginning in 2012) following shifts at work, observing the children in classrooms and having nearly daily contact for a few years. DeParle says, "[the family's] experiences across three generations can only be understood as part of a broader epoch of migration that is transforming much of the world."

In an accessible and engaging manner, he splits the book into two parts: There and Here, combining anecdotes about Rosalie's becoming a nurse in the Philippines (and working in Saudi Arabia and UAE before moving to Texas) with immigration facts and context. Roughly fifteen percent of DeParle's book is devoted to extensive notes and a helpful index. The facts that he relates in the prologue alone are pretty amazing: consider that one in four children in the United States is an immigrant or a child of one; or that there are 258 million migrants around the world, assuming an equal size (if not bigger) population back home that they support, this group of half a billion would together form the world's third largest country. DeParle writes, "my own light bulb moment came in learning that remittances – the sums migrants send home – are three times the world's foreign aid budgets combined." A GOOD PROVIDER IS ONE WHO LEAVES received starred reviews from Booklist ("family story [that] will captivate YAs interested in immigration and globalization"), Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. For more of his observations follow the link below to an interview on NPR.

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/752805784/a-good-provider-argues-migration-can-be-salvation