Harvard Book Store Virtual Event: Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block

presenting Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance
in conversation with WALTER V. ROBINSON

Harvard Book Store’s virtual event series welcomes celebrated journalists TERRY GREENE STERLING and JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK for a discussion of their co-authored book Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance. They will be joined in conversation by Pulitzer Prize–winning Boston Globe reporter and Editor-at-Large WALTER V. ROBINSON.

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About Driving While Brown

Journalists Terry Greene Sterling and Jude Joffe-Block spent years chronicling the human consequences of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s relentless immigration enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. In Driving While Brown, they tell the tale of two opposing movements that redefined Arizona’s political landscape—the restrictionist cause embraced by Arpaio and the Latino-led resistance that rose up against it.

The story follows Arpaio, his supporters, and his adversaries, including Lydia Guzman, who gathered evidence for a racial-profiling lawsuit that took surprising turns. Guzman joined a coalition determined to stop Arpaio, reform unconstitutional policing, and fight for Latino civil rights. Driving While Brown details Arpaio’s transformation—from “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” who forced inmates to wear pink underwear, into the nation’s most feared immigration enforcer who ended up receiving President Donald Trump’s first pardon. The authors immerse readers in the lives of people on both sides of the battle and uncover the deep roots of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The result of tireless investigative reporting, this powerful book provides critical insights into effective resistance to institutionalized racism and the community organizing that helped transform Arizona from a conservative stronghold into a battleground state.

Praise for Driving While Brown

“Arpaio is, if it’s possible, even Trumpier than Trump. This splendid book is a lively portrait of a demagogic anti-immigration crusader and the people who helped bring him down. But the authors have nonetheless let Arpaio’s own voice be heard, and have listened carefully to people on both sides of the immigration debate that seems certain to rage for decades to come.” —Adam Hochschild, author of Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays

“Driving While Brown reads like a novel and is at once a rich, intimate portrayal of the excesses of immigration enforcement in one locality in the country as well as an analysis of the forces and power dynamics that make these repressive practices possible in the rest of the country.” —Cecilia Menjívar, Dorothy L. Meier Chair in Social Equities and Professor of Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles

“Driving While Brown is an engaging chronicle of hate disguised as populism, from its short shelf life to how it inspired courageous activists to stand up, push back, and launch a movement that’s remaking our political landscape.” —Ricardo Sandoval-Palos, PBS Public Editor and coauthor of The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement