2023 Honorable Mention, Isis Duarte Book Prize, Haiti/ Dominican Republic section (LASA) 2023 Winner, Gordon K. and Sybil Lewis Book Award, Caribbean Studies Association An innovative study of the artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the Caribbean islands. The first study to examine literary and artistic representations of undocumented migration within the Hispanophone Caribbean, Crossing Waters relates a journey that remains silenced and largely unknown. Analyzing works by novelists, short-story writers, poets, and visual artists replete with references to drowning and echoes of the Middle Passage, Marisel Moreno shines a spotlight on the plight that these migrants face. In some cases, Puerto Rico takes on a new role as a stepping-stone to the continental United States and the society migrants will join there. Meanwhile the land border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the only terrestrial border in the Hispanophone Caribbean, emerges as a complex space within this cartography of borders. And while the Border Patrol occupies US headlines, the Coast Guard occupies the nightmares of refugees. An untold story filled with beauty, possibility, and sorrow, Crossing Waters encourages us to rethink the geography and experience of undocumented migration and the role that the Caribbean archipelago plays as a border zone.

Combines histories of the complex interactions between blacks and Natives in North America with examples and readings of art that has emerged from those exchanges.

2017 Christianity Today Book Award winner (“Christian Living / Discipleship” category) Get ready for the wettest, stormiest, wildest trip through the Gospel you’ve ever taken! The gospels are dramatic, wild, and wet—set in a rich maritime culture on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus’ first disciples were ragtag fishermen, and Jesus’ messages and miracles teem with water, fish, fishermen, net-breaking catches, sea crossings, boat-sinking storms, and even a walk on water. Because this world is foreign and distant to us, we’ve missed much about the disciples’ experiences and about following Jesus—until now. Leslie Leyland Fields—a well-known writer, respected biblical exegete, and longtime Alaskan fisherwoman—crosses the waters of time and culture to take us out on the Sea of Galilee, through a rugged season of commercial fishing with her family in Alaska, and through the waters of the New Testament. You’ll be swept up in a fresh experience of the gospels, traveling with the fishermen disciples from Jesus’ baptism to the final miraculous catch of fish—and also experiencing Leslie’s own efforts to follow Christ out on her own Alaskan sea. In a time when so many are “unfollowing” Jesus and leaving the Church, Crossing the Waters delivers a fresh encounter with Jesus and explores what it means to “come, follow me.”

Off the coast of Cape Cod lies a small windswept island called Penikese. Alone on the island is a school for juvenile delinquents, the Penikese Island School, where Daniel Robb lived and worked for three years as a teacher. By turns harsh, desolate, and starkly beautiful, the island offers its temporary residents respite from lives filled with abuse, violence, and chaos. But as Robb discovers, peace, solitude, and a structured lifestyle can go only so far toward healing the anger and hurt he finds not only in his students but within himself. Lyrical and heartfelt, Crossing the Water is the memoir of his first eighteen months on Penikese, and a poignant meditation on the many ways that young men can become lost.

The first in her family born in the United States, Maureen Waters grew up the "Bronx Irish" daughter of two unforgettable immigrants: her storytelling, former revolutionary father, and her fierce, IRA-supporting mother. Crossing Highbridge is framed by the accidental death of Waters's son and her struggle to make sense of this loss by re-imagining her past and her heritage. Her life in postwar New York City was colored by Catholicism and strong cultural links to "the other side"—by Irish step dancing, the melodies of Thomas Moore, and the rituals, inflections, and harrowing memories impressed on her. Sex was a mystery. Schoolgirls wore below-the-knee blue serge uniforms with starched white collars and cuffs. Brutal treatment at the hands of the nuns who ran her college drove Waters to transfer to a secular school. Waters rebelled against an upbringing that seemed to wall her off from the twentieth century. She marr ed outside the church, divorced, and became a scholar and professor at the City University of New York. Waters follows in the tradition of her father with this vividly humorous and moving true tale.

Join Glen and Julie as they extend their voyage from New Zealand through the Mideast. While in New Zealand they participate in every sailor's dream: the America's Cup Races. But there is no turning back once they leave the wonders of the Pacific for the Indian Ocean and find themselves in the grip of natural and political forces beyond their control. Crossing Pirate Waters is written with candor and wry humor. Come aboard and experience the uncertainties of what is at times, all-too-authentic experiences far from the islands of cruising romance and margaritas.