100 Books Like Violence Against Latina Immigrants

Hearing about domestic violence from a survivor’s first-hand perspective is one of the most important ways to learn about this widespread issue.

This book was one of the first that I ever read about this topic many years ago, and even though the book is nearly three decades old, it still remains one of the most powerful first-hand accounts of a survivor’s experience.

When I teach with this book, my students are blown away by Beth’s strength and what she overcomes. Through this book, they come to understand how someone can end up in such a dangerous situation, and the many barriers they often face to finding justice and safety.

Anthropological literature is one of the best places to look to learn about issues from a cross-cultural perspective, and Dorothy Ayers Counts and Judith Brown are often credited with literally “writing the book” on domestic violence in anthropology.

Likewise, Jacquelyn Campbell is one of the foremost thinkers and systems creators when it comes to domestic violence and health services. Through this book and their earlier edition from 1992, they offered the first compilations of anthropological perspectives on domestic violence. This book demonstrates how different people around the world experience this issue so we can contemplate how it looks and is dealt with across different cultural settings. 

If you’re interested in learning about domestic violence from a cross-cultural perspective, the literature on domestic violence in anthropology is an excellent place to look.

This is the second book by Jennifer Wies and Hillary Haldane, two anthropologists who have carved out a space for understanding how to apply anthropological insights to actual domestic violence work. This book offers cross-cultural ideas for how to do just that from a variety of anthropologists working all around the world who continue to work together on this issue from an applied anthropological perspective.

Both Wies and Haldane are mentors of mine, and Haldane was a huge support in the development of my own research. I have also collaborated with several of the authors in this book and can attest to the excellence of their research.

For a global perspective on domestic violence, Parson provides a comprehensive look at issues around domestic violence in Chile. She specifically follows the stories of several women and how they navigate through services and systems, facing further violence through the relentless barriers they find themselves up against.

Parson and I both graduated from the Rutgers Anthropology doctoral program and worked under the same advisors—albeit many years apart—and I am grateful to have had her excellent scholarship as a reference for my own. 

This is an anthology that thirty authors submitted stories to. This book dealt with the serious subject of domestic violence. The writers ranged from the tender age of 12, who shared her real-life story dealing with abuse, to authors who submitted poetry, and others peeks into their novels. This book touched my heart and soul on a personal level as domestic violence in all its ugly forms is something that too many people don't want to discuss. It's become a secret that women, men, and children learn to deal with quietly for fear of not being believed or shame.

I’m keenly drawn to this novel because it navigates the specter between myth and violence, the grandeur of folkloric myth, and the raw side of violence, which are so descriptive of the Mexican past and present. Melchor blurs the lines between a world of quasi-fantastical superstition and hyper-realism, delving at times into the territory of mystery and crime fiction, all of it contained by the paradigm of the Mexican drug war, accurately rendering the reach and expanse of drug consumption and distribution as much as the ravages they bring about.

Centered around the figure of a murdered witch and alleged healer in the depths of the state of Veracruz, this narrative unmasks the mythical traditions of a locality to uncover the violence that lies at the depths of Mexican communities affected by the war on drugs. Melchor masterfully demystifies and rids exoticism from the Mexican imaginary to denounce the marginalization… show more.

"No faces, no eyes. Not if you want to survive."

Riley lives in a lonely world where a single look drives people into frenzied violence. Stay alive by staying away from people. This state of affairs has become routine to her: "It's horrifying. Then it's weird. Then it's just inconvenient."

But she considers risking it all when a new neighbor moves in down the street. Your Shadow Half Remains is a beautifully written meditation on love, isolation, paranoia, and so much more. I couldn't put this one down.

This is a landmark book in political economy and economic history. 

Douglass North won the Noble Prize in Economics in part for the study of institutions in economic history. 

This was his final work (coauthored with Wallis and Weingast). And while the lessons of North's earlier work on institutions have been incorporated into the wider body of scholarship in economic history and development economics, I think the lessons of this book haven't been fully absorbed.  

The fundamental idea is that all societies face "the problem of violence". They have to deter individuals from resorting to violence in order to take what they want. But the means through which society limits violence vary and are often detrimental to long-run economic growth. There is thus a "natural" form of government that is common throughout history, capable of producing social order but not widespread prosperity.

Achieving sustained economic growth in the long-run requires… show more.

The Ground Breaking takes a look at the work Tulsa is doing to repair damage from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre—to make reparation. Specifically, the book examines Tulsa's commitment to investigating longstanding accounts of mass graves containing Black bodies hastily buried in the wake of the massacre. Collective trauma from historical events must be addressed. Answering the answerable questions that linger from the past is part of the healing process. 

The true story of the misdemeanor arrest in Tombstone gone terribly wrong that has resounded for almost a century and a half. There are literally dozens of books on this subject, but this is by far the best. Ms. Marks accurately, and without hyperbole, researched the motivations of the men involved in the Earp-Cowboy feud and precisely documents the conflicts which arose between them. As one reads her book, one realizes that the Earp mythos which has been and continues to be touted by other authors and the film industry is erroneous. There were really no good guys or bad guys, just regular men whose political and social ambitions led to bloodshed.