Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life. Her reporting has appeared in outlets including The New Yorker, Orion, This American Life, and VQR, where she is a contributing editor.
Joining a gang seemed like the best way to evade violence for women in El Salvador, but in many cases it only put them more squarely in danger.
For Central American migrants, the promise of work in the fields of California has dried up.