Reading List

Authors Like Sonia Nazario

Enrique was five when his mother left Honduras to work in the United States. Eleven years later he went after her, riding on freight trains through Mexico, and it took him eight attempts. To report his story, Sonia Nazario rode seven trains herself and travelled about 1,600 miles through 13 of Mexico’s 31 states, half of it on the roofs; on a fuel tanker in Chiapas a tree branch hit her in the face and nearly knocked her off. Her six-part Los Angeles Times series won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2003, and the book Enrique’s Journey followed in 2006. Nazario grew up in Kansas and Argentina, where at 14 she decided to become a journalist. The ten writers below share her method: they go where their subjects go, stay a long time, and let a few lives explain a whole system.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Narrative journalism · Migration · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you liked Enrique’s Journey, start with Óscar Martínez, whose The Beast (2010; English 2013) follows Central American migrants on the same freight trains through Mexico. Luis Alberto Urrea’s The Devil’s Highway (2004) reconstructs a May 2001 crossing in which fourteen of twenty-six men died in the Arizona desert, and Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends (2017) follows child migrants into US immigration court. Further down are the immersion reporters who shaped the method, and a former Border Patrol agent whose memoir divided readers.

10 authors like Sonia Nazario

01
Migrant reporting before Nazario

John Steinbeck

American · The Harvest Gypsies (1936), The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

In October 1936 Steinbeck wrote seven articles for the San Francisco News about the migrant farm workers of California’s Central Valley during the Depression, later collected as The Harvest Gypsies. The government camps, the hungry children and a stillborn baby from those pieces reappear in The Grapes of Wrath, his novel of a family driven west from Oklahoma.

The American root of Nazario’s subject: families pushed onto the road by poverty, in a country that needs their labour but not them. Steinbeck reported first and then turned the reporting into fiction; Nazario stays with the facts.

— Lisanne

Every book by John Steinbeck →

02
Riding the rails first

Ted Conover

American · Rolling Nowhere (1984), Coyotes (1987), Newjack (2000)

Conover was born in 1958. For Rolling Nowhere he rode freight trains across the western United States with railroad tramps in 1980, and Coyotes comes from a year travelling with Mexican migrants, crossing the US–Mexico border with them three times. Newjack, about a year working as a guard at Sing Sing prison, won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

The participatory reporter Nazario most resembles: he makes the journey rather than interviewing people after it. Coyotes covers the crossing north from the side of adult workers, where Nazario follows a child.

— Lisanne

Every book by Ted Conover →

03
The desert crossing

Luis Alberto Urrea

Mexican-American, born in Tijuana · The Devil’s Highway (2004), The Hummingbird’s Daughter (2005), Into the Beautiful North (2009)

Urrea was born in Tijuana in 1955. The Devil’s Highway reconstructs May 2001, when twenty-six men crossed into the southern Arizona desert and fourteen of them died; it was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written novels, including The Hummingbird’s Daughter, about his father’s aunt Teresita Urrea, known as the Saint of Cabora.

The closest book to Enrique’s Journey in shape: one group, one crossing, rebuilt step by step from interviews and records. Urrea writes with more anger and more literary licence; Nazario keeps to plain reported fact.

— Lisanne

Every book by Luis Alberto Urrea →

04
The same trains, from El Salvador

Óscar Martínez

Salvadoran · The Beast (2010; English 2013)

Martínez is a reporter for the Salvadoran news site El Faro. The Beast, first published in Spanish as Los migrantes que no importan (‘The migrants who don’t matter’), follows Central Americans through Mexico on the freight trains and through the robberies and kidnappings along the route. The English translation is by Daniela Maria Ugaz and John B. Washington.

Martínez reports Nazario’s route from the Central American side and lets many migrants speak instead of following one. Read him for the people who never reach the border.

— Lisanne

Every book by Óscar Martínez →

05
Children in the court

Valeria Luiselli

Mexican · Tell Me How It Ends (2017), Lost Children Archive (2019)

Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983. Tell Me How It Ends is built around the forty questions she put to Central American children while working as an interpreter for young migrants seeking legal status in the United States; it won the American Book Award. Lost Children Archive, a novel about a family driving from New York to Arizona during the border crisis, won the Dublin Literary Award in 2021.

Luiselli picks up the children Nazario followed after they arrive, at the questionnaire that decides whether they can stay. She is more essayistic and sets her own green-card application beside their stories.

— Lisanne
06
The other side of the line

Francisco Cantú

American · The Line Becomes a River (2018)

Cantú worked as a US Border Patrol agent from 2008 to 2012, and The Line Becomes a River is his memoir of that work. It won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Current Interest, and it was also protested: in 2018 activists read accounts of Border Patrol abuses at one of his San Francisco readings, objecting that an agent’s voice was being amplified over migrants’ own, and an Oakland bookshop cancelled an event.

The book here that argues with Nazario’s view from the road, because it is told by someone who enforced the border. Read it with Enrique’s Journey to see the same territory from inside the system, and decide how much that perspective should count.

— Lisanne

Every book by Francisco Cantú →

07
Years in one place

Katherine Boo

American · Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012)

Boo was born in 1964. Her Washington Post series on group homes for people with intellectual disabilities won the paper the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Behind the Beautiful Forevers comes from three years of reporting in Annawadi, a slum beside Mumbai’s airport, and centres on Abdul, who sorts and sells recyclable rubbish; it won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Boo and Nazario share the long embed and the plain, scene-by-scene telling of other people’s choices. Boo stays in one place where Nazario travels, but both build a whole economy out of a few lives.

— Lisanne

Every book by Katherine Boo →

08
A decade with one family

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

American · Random Family (2003)

Random Family grew out of LeBlanc’s reporting for Newsday on the trial of the Bronx heroin dealer George ‘Boy George’ Rivera, and became a book about two women and their family, their children and the men in prison. It took more than ten years to research and write. She received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2006.

The model for Nazario’s patience: a reporter who stays with poor families for years and writes without commentary. LeBlanc’s subject is the mothers and children around the drug trade; Nazario’s is the mothers who leave to find work.

— Lisanne

Every book by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc →

09
The smuggling business

Patrick Radden Keefe

American · The Snakehead (2009), Say Nothing (2018), Empire of Pain (2021)

The Snakehead tells the story of Cheng Chui Ping, ‘Sister Ping’, whose gang smuggled people from China to New York from 1984 to 2000, and of the Golden Venture, which ran aground off New York in 1993 with 286 Chinese migrants on board; ten died. His newest book, London Falling (2026), investigates the death of the teenager Zac Brettler in London.

Keefe shows the business behind the journey Nazario describes: the smugglers, the debts and the law. Pair him with her for the people who profit from migration.

— Lisanne

Every book by Patrick Radden Keefe →

10
Migration as history

Isabel Wilkerson

American · The Warmth of Other Suns (2010), Caste (2020)

Wilkerson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1961, and in 1994 became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. The Warmth of Other Suns, about the Great Migration of Black Americans out of the South between 1915 and the 1970s, took about fifteen years and drew on interviews with more than 1,000 people, told through personal stories.

Wilkerson does for a migration within the United States what Nazario does for one across its border: she explains a mass movement through a few people’s reasons for leaving. Read her for the long view of why families split up to find work.

— Lisanne

Every book by Isabel Wilkerson →

Where to start if you loved Sonia Nazario

If you want the same route, read Óscar Martínez.

The Beast covers the freight trains through Mexico from the migrants’ side, with many more voices.

If you want one crossing reconstructed, read Luis Alberto Urrea.

The Devil’s Highway follows twenty-six men into the Arizona desert in May 2001.

If you want the children after the border, read Valeria Luiselli.

Tell Me How It Ends is short and built on forty questions asked of child migrants.

If you want the method, read Ted Conover or Katherine Boo.

Conover rode the trains and crossed the border himself; Boo spent three years reporting in one Mumbai slum.

If you want to go back to Nazario, read Enrique’s Journey.

The 2006 book expands her Pulitzer-winning series; a young adult adaptation followed in 2013.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Sonia Nazario

Who writes like Sonia Nazario?

Óscar Martínez, Luis Alberto Urrea and Valeria Luiselli are the closest: all three write about migration from Central America and Mexico through specific journeys and people. Ted Conover, Katherine Boo and Adrian Nicole LeBlanc share her long, immersive reporting method.

What should I read after Enrique’s Journey?

Try The Beast by Óscar Martínez for the same freight-train route, or The Devil’s Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea for a single desert crossing in 2001.

Is Sonia Nazario like Luis Alberto Urrea?

Both reconstruct real migrant journeys from interviews and records. Urrea, born in Tijuana, writes with more literary licence; Nazario retraced Enrique’s route herself and keeps to reported fact.

Did Sonia Nazario ride the trains herself?

Yes. She told Mother Jones she rode seven trains and travelled about 1,600 miles through 13 Mexican states, half of it on top of the trains.

Does Sonia Nazario have a new book?

Her only book so far is Enrique’s Journey (2006), with a young adult adaptation in 2013. Her speaker biography says she is at work on a second book, but no title or date has been announced.

Which version of Enrique’s Journey should I read?

Adults should read the 2006 book; the 2007 paperback adds an epilogue and afterword. The 2013 young adult adaptation is shorter and written for teenage readers.

Sources

List last reviewed 31 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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