The great escape : a true story of forced labor and immigrant dreams in America / Saket Soni.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Soni, Saket, 1977- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Forced labor--Mississippi--History--21st century.

Forced labor.

Immigrants--United States--Social conditions--21st century.

Immigrants.

Foreign workers--Mississippi--History--21st century.

Foreign workers.

Labor camps--Mississippi--History--21st century.

Labor camps.

Escapes--Mississippi--History--21st century.

Escapes.

Exploitation.

Immigrants--Social conditions.

Mississippi.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

352 pages ; 24 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill, North Carolina : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2023.

Summary:

"In 2007, Saket Soni received an anonymous phone call from an Indian migrant worker inside a Mississippi labor camp. He and 500 other men were living in squalor in Gulf Coast "man camps," surrounded by barbed wire, watched by armed guards, crammed into cold trailers with putrid portable toilets, forced to eat moldy bread and frozen rice. Worse, lured by the promise of good work and green cards, the men had desperately scraped together up to 20,000 dollars each to apply for this "opportunity" to rebuild oil rigs after Hurricane Katrina, putting their families into impossible debt. Soni traces the workers' extraordinary escape; their march on foot to Washington, DC; and their 31-day hunger strike to bring attention to their cause"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Dreams

Man camp

Escape

Truth march

Hunted

Faith

Epilogue: forgetting.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9781643750088

1643750089

OCLC:

1350426995