Jason De León, National Book Award winner, talks of human smuggling, immigration and the lives behind the stereotypes.
National Book Award non-fiction winner Jason De León says writing about human smugglers taught him unexpected lessons — as immigration remains a political flashpoint.
Anthropologist and author Jason De León said the problem with the topic of migration is that people "pedal these very simplistic stories — and it's a very complex issue."
To examine the issue of human smuggling, De León spent seven years closely studying the lives of men dedicated to smuggling migrants from Central America and Mexico into the U.S.
The result was his nonfiction book, “Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling," which on Wednesday garnered De León the prestigious National Book Award for nonfiction.
“I’m still in pretty much in disbelief,” De León told NBC News over the phone Thursday afternoon, in his first interview since winning the award.
For De León, the award “felt like a major win” for a book about elements of migration that are “totally overlooked.”
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