Author Daniel Alarcón On His New Book And The Immigrant Experience

It's Been a Minute

NPR

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🗓️ 31 October 2017

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Daniel Alarcón's (@DanielGAlarcon) new book of short stories, "The King Is Always Above The People," deals closely with immigration and the Latino experience. Alarcón talks to Sam about his own life immigrating from Peru to the U.S. at a young age, the Latino diaspora, and reinventing oneself in a new place. Though Alarcón didn't intend for it to be political, his book gets at what it means to be an immigrant in today's political climate. Alarcón is also host of NPR's Spanish-language podcast, Radio Ambulante. E-mail the It's Been A Minute team at [email protected] or tweet @NPRItsBeenAMin with your feedback. Follow Sam on Twitter @samsanders and producers Brent Baughman @brentbaughman and Anjuli Sastry @AnjuliSastry.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Scott Detro. There's so much political news to follow these days, but you don't have to keep up with all of it.
0:05.4	You just have to keep up with us on the NPR Politics Podcast.
0:09.0	With the team of NPR political reporters and editors, we record two episodes a week,
0:13.5	and sometimes more when the big news happens.
0:15.8	Find the NPR Politics Podcast on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:20.4	Hey y'all, from NPR I'm Sam Sanders, it's been a minute.
0:31.6	It's Tuesday, which means it's time for a deep dive.
0:34.5	Today I am talking with an author who just released a book that is very political,
0:39.2	even though he didn't mean for it to be that way.
0:42.0	Daniel Alarcon is the author. His new book is called The Cane is always above the people.
0:47.0	It's a collection of 10 short stories, all fiction, and it's kind of required reading for
0:51.9	this political moment that we find ourselves in right now.
0:54.7	The stories talk about the Latino experience, the immigrant experience, and mostly just what it
1:00.4	means to move, to leave one place for somewhere else. At a time when there's a lot of political
1:05.7	chatter about things like building a wall or whether we let certain people stay in America,
1:11.0	this book by Alarcon and these stories of fiction, they really get at some of the
1:16.0	truths in what it means to be an immigrant today. So Alarcon himself is bounced around.
1:21.8	He's Peruvian, but he immigrated to Birmingham, Alabama at the age of three.
1:26.5	He moved back to Peru and then he moved to Iowa to study writing.
1:31.4	He now lives in New York City, and Alarcon does not just write.
1:34.4	He is a radio guy as well. He hosts an NPR podcast called Radio Ambulante.
1:40.0	All right, there's a lot in this chat. It's kind of heavy, but I think it is worthwhile.
	...

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