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Vendor
Fritz Agency
Christian Dittus
Original language
English

CHECKPOINT ZIPOLITE

Belén Fernández

Quarantine in a Small Place

Since leaving her American homeland in 2003 Belén Fernández had been an inveterate traveler. Ceaselessly wandering the world, the only constant in her itinerary was a conviction never to return to the country of her childhood. Then the COVID-19 lockdown happened and Fernandez found herself stranded in a small village on the Pacific coast of Mexico.

This charming, wryly humorous account of nine months stuck in one place nevertheless roams freely: over reflections on previous excursions to the wilder regions of North Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe; over her new-found friendship with Javier, the mezcal-drinking, chain-smoking near-septuagenarian she encounters in his plastic chair on Mexico's only clothing-optional beach; over her protracted struggle to obtain a life-saving supply of yerba mate; and over, literally, the rope of a COVID-19 checkpoint, set up directly outside her front door and manned by armed guards who require her to don a mask every time she returns home.

Belén Fernández, a contributing editor at Jacobin Magazine, graduated from Columbia University with a BA in English. She frequently writes for Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, and Jacobin.
Available products
Book

Published 2021-07-01 by OR Books

Comments

“I doubt there's another journalist quite like her Fernández's prose is so incisive, pithy, powerful, and often funny.” ?Counterpunch “This is a travel memoir like no other: incredibly funny, observant, humane, anarchic, politically incisive, sophisticated, and raffish. Belén Fernández is a dangerously enchanting siren." ?Francisco Goldman, author of Monkey Boy “A politically astute, world-wise, and occasionally hilarious gem of a book. Fernández's prose is an antidote to quarantine, an aperture to the anti-humanism of apartheid politics." ?John Washington, author of The Dispossessed: A Story of Asylum at the US-Mexican Border and Beyond “Written with the author's trademark wine bottle in hand, between cartwheels on the beach of death, this book skewers politicians and other unworthy foes with a precision inaccessible to more sober writers...” ?Adrienne Pine, author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras “This is hardcore, down-dirty travel and travel writing. A personal Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. A new and powerful form of nonfiction, a primer.” ?The Eurasia Review