Ethnographic studies of transnational migration frequently suffer from two tendencies: (1) an overly celebratory perspective that sees migrants as agents defying the grip of nation-states and (2) a particular thinness as researchers choose breadth over depth in their ethnographic accounts in the name of multisited approaches. From Cuenca to Queens suffers from neither of these handicaps and, instead, offers an often-sorrowful, experience-near account of one family in the Ecuadorian Andes caught up in the throes of globalization. The book is a necessary reminder of how an “extraordinary event” (p. 184) like the migration of a family member can illuminate otherwise everyday aspects of raising children, maintaining a marriage, and coping with injuries of racial and class prejudice.

Anthropologist Ann Miles has carried out fieldwork in Cuenca for over 15 years, pursuing research interests ranging from childhood to commercial natural medicine. Each fieldwork stint, however, always brought her into the intimate folds of one family’s life. In From Cuenca to Queens, Miles captures the hardscrabble lives of the Quitasacas family over a ten-year period, charting the ups and downs of parents Lucho and Rosa as they try to get ahead in Ecuador’s perpetually stagnant economy and watching as their children careen fitfully through adolescence. The story details the family’s migration from the countryside to Cuenca (and the enduring ties between both locales), their confrontation with Cuenca’s rigid and racist class system, and the tug-of-war of modernity. To tell this story, Miles revisits the life-history method pioneered by Oscar Lewis. While attentive to the criticisms of Lewis’s work, including the much-maligned “culture of poverty” concept, Miles takes her cues from his ability to locate large structural processes expressed in domestic situations: "[I] borrow from him the idea that a single family can reveal much about the meanings of culture in individual lives” (p. 7).

Each of the central chapters of the book profiles a different family member’s perspective regarding the eldest son Vincente’s undocumented migration to the United States. The views of both parents and his younger siblings (presented as a combined chapter) are included. Vincente’s story caps these chapters and further complicates the meanings accorded to his migration. Each chapter unfolds in a highly readable format, including a brief introduction to the family member (and Miles’s relationship to him or her), a chronological selection of field notes, and a first-person narrative. In the final chapter, Miles brings the various voices into dialogue with one another and deftly problematizes the black box concept of “family.” At her most perceptive, Miles demonstrates how each family member ascribes different meanings to Vincente’s migration. When it is obvious that Vincente's has not met with quick enrichment abroad, Miles shows the effect of this fact on different family members. Each pegs his or her life trajectory and own success up against Vincente’s life abroad. The juxtaposition begs an important question: Who is really transnational? Vincente, who has physically migrated, or his family members, who have tied their own dreams in Cuenca to his success in the United States?

Candid discussions about the research process also give this book the kind of transparency missing in much recent anthropological writing. Specifically, the field notes—arranged by month and year—stress the ways anthropological understandings form (often slowly) over time. Through this process, Miles puts an incredibly honest face on the research experience. Her chapter on Lucho is perhaps the most telling in this regard. Miles’s field notes are forthright about difficulties she had liking Lucho at beginning of her research. Yet, by the end of the book, Lucho figures prominently, both as Miles’s main informant and as one whose own eventual migration has severely changed the Quitasaca family. Because of the emphasis placed on fieldwork, this book would be a fine addition to an ethnographic methods course. Surely, some readers will find the lack of authorial guidance a hindrance, and, indeed, Miles could have pushed the methodological implications of her unique approach farther. Overall this book will be of interest to migration specialists, those studying family systems, and anyone seeking ways to demystify the fieldwork experience and ethnographic analysis. Finally, Miles should also be commended for filling a critical void in Andean ethnography by providing one of the few ethnographic accounts from the region not about indigenous peoples. Although she purposely shies away from affixing an ethnic identity to the Quitasacas (they can be provisionally referred to as “chola/o”), her work highlights the problematic nature of ever ascribing fixed labels such as “mestizo” and “Indian” to peoples of the Andean region.