BY KAREN BOSSICK

Ketchum’s Community Library will offer two programs offering a behind-the-scenes look at Mexican immigration and the Chicanx culture this week in conjunction with the valley’s BIG READ book “Into the Beautiful North.”

• Dr. Carolyn Gonzalez will explore Luis Alberto Urrea’s book in the context of Chicanx literature at 6 p.m. Tuesday Feb. 19.

  Gonzalez is assistant professor of Spanish in the World Languages, Literatures and Cultures Department at the College of Idaho. Her areas of specialty are in Latinx, Chicanx and Mexicana literatures.

  She is currently working on a book project focused on the representation of prostitution in literature by Mexicana authors.

• A free showing of the film “The Other Side of Immigration” will be shown at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20.

The 55-minute film by Roy Germano was constructed from more than 700 interviews in Mexican towns where half the population has left to work in the United States. The film, made with funding from the National Science Foundation, asks why so many Mexicans come to the United States and what happens to the families and communities they leave behind.

It gives people who are disparaged as “illegal” a human face.  And it provides a perspective on undocumented immigration rarely witnessed by American eyes, challenging audiences to imagine more creative and effective solutions.

It won the 2009 Politics on Film Founder’s Award.

Germano teaches in the International Relations Program at New York University. He is the author of “Outsourcing Welfare: How the Money Immigrants Send Home Contributes to Stability in Developing Countries,” which was published in 2018.  He also has been a contributor to CNN, MSNBC, NPR and Fox News.