NO WORD FOR WELCOME

No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy traces small-town life as the big-box economy comes to town. Wendy Call devoted a decade to reporting, researching and writing this narrative nonfiction book, which won the 2011 Grub Street National Book Prize for Nonfiction and the 2012 International Latino Book Award for Best History / Political Book.

Head Juror for the Grub Street Prize, Michelle Seaton, noted, “”It’s a beautiful book, well-reported and important in scope.” Orion magazine included No Word for Welcome in its 2011 “Books We Really Liked” list, noting in a review: “We should be grateful for Wendy Call’s delightful, yet painfully truthful, story of the challenges facing one of Mexico’s lesser-known regions.”

Author Sandra Cisneros said of No Word for Welcome, “Fascinating. Beautifully written. Deeply researched. With sensitivity and respect, Wendy Call has written about the modernization of a centuries-old community. This is a book written with humility, bravery, and wisdom, and honors those who trusted the writer with their incredible stories.”

Elena Poniatowska said of the book, '“Wendy Call's book offers us much more than a personal view of the people in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. She challenges mythologies about this region of Mexico and provides a vital assessment of the current state and collective concerns of Indigenous peoples who are resisting globalization. Her work is illuminating.”

No Word for Welcome has been adopted for university classroom use in Creative Writing, Latin American Studies, and Human Development courses. Wendy Call has given presentations about the book at more than fifty bookstores, universities, and community venues in eighteen states, as part of an Atlantic-to-Pacific tour.

Read about the book at the University of Nebraska Press website.

Praise & Reviews

“…lively narrative, detailed description, and engaging scenes that render her subjects—a schoolteacher, fishermen, activists–three-dimensional.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Call’s new book, No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy, is the result of a decade of research. No Word For Welcome is written with an attention to narrative and prose that is rare among non-fiction works. It is not only highly informative, but also engaging and personal. …[t]he people of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec have much to teach us about the human side of globalization.”
—Hamid Khan, KPFK, Los Angeles