INVISIBLE IMMIGRANTS: SPANIARDS IN THE US (1868-1945)

INVISIBLE IMMIGRANTS: SPANIARDS IN THE US (1868-1945)

For the last nine years, Spanish writer Luis Argeo and NYU Professor James D. Fernández have been crisscrossing the United States and Spain, interviewing descendants of Spanish immigrants, and scanning their family archives. In the process, they have amassed a digital archive of more than 8,000 photographs, which document the experience of the tens of thousands of Spaniards who, in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, settled in the United States.

"Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the United States, 1868-1945" uses these private images to tell the almost unknown story of those intrepid Spaniards. All texts, including photo captions, are in both English and Spanish.

Francis Lam, in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times, referred to the book as "a beautiful haunting historical photo album of the Spanish in America."

Sebastiaan Faber, of Oberlin College, has written:

"In addition to being beautifully curated, Invisible Immigrants is a milestone in the field of Spanish immigration studies in the United States. Based on painstaking, rigorous research yet accessible to a broad audience, the book will prove seminal for years to come. It's a must-have for both public and academic libraries."

And José Moya, Professor of History and Director of the Forum on Migration, Barnard/Columbia says:

"James Fernández’ and Luis Argeo’s Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the US (1868-1945) is both a work of scholarship and a labor of love. Its chapters follow and capture the cycle of the immigrant experience: leaving the homeland; toiling, playing, and organizing in the new land; the solidarity and conflict engendered by the Spanish Civil War; and the emergence of the American-born generations.

The photographs gathered by the authors are a treasure trove. They not only turn visible the immigrants of the title but also display the richness and diversity of their existence: Asturian cigar-makers in Tampa and miners in West Virginia, Andalusian plantation workers in Hawaii and California, Basque shepherds in Idaho and Nevada, picnics and days at the beach, orchestras and dances, ball games of all sorts, dinners, weddings, children…a veritable kaleidoscope of immigrant live and memories."

The first print-run of the book (1500 copies) sold out in a matter of months, and was acquired by more than 75 college and university libraries in Spain and the US. We have issued a limited and final second printing (750) and the book can be ordered here: invisibleimmigrants.com

​"Invisible Immigrants: Spaniards in the US, 1868-1945" By James D. Fernández and Luis Argeo Madrid: Whitestoneridge Productions, 2015. 236 pp. 

ISBN: 978-84-617-2491-8

Price: $60.00