Monthly Archives: September 2009

The Provost’s Office is try­ing some­thing new with fresh­men this year.  They’ve asked the three thou­sand plus fresh­men to read the book “Antonio’s Gun & Delfino’s Dream.”  It’s a non­fic­tion book writ­ten by for­mer L.A. Times reporter Sam Quinones about mod­ern day Mexico.

Quinones writes about things that hover on the edge of your con­scious­ness, but that you might not have taken the time to think about.  Remem­ber the vel­vet paint­ings that you used to see at every flea mar­ket and the vans parked at road­sides through­out the state sell­ing those paint­ing?  I never thought about who was doing the paint­ing or that it was a lucra­tive job for hun­dreds of Mex­i­cans who moved to Juarez, Mex­ico to find a bet­ter life.

This book takes you to places you haven’t been before.

On Sep­tem­ber 15th at 7 p.m. in the Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion build­ing Quinones will talk about his expe­ri­ences in Mex­ico and sign books.  He will also be at the UNM book­store in Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 16 from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. for a short talk and book signing.

Assign­ing the book to fresh­men was the idea of Provost Suzanne Ortega.  She wanted to talk about immi­gra­tion in a way that focused on the peo­ple and not the politics.