Letters to My FBI Agent: Notes from an Anarchist Under Surveillance

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Letters to My FBI Agent is a darkly funny memoir told in the form of direct address to the federal agent who can’t stop circling the narrator’s life.

What begins as a taunting correspondence with “Maria Garcia” (the name on the caller ID) becomes something oddly intimate: an investigation into how a person’s humanity can be reduced to a mugshot in a file and how that shapes the way you see yourself.

Moving between prison classrooms, punk shows, family life, political organizing, and the painful task of “existing on the right side of the law,” the narrator tracks a life living under the thumb of law enforcement, all while wrestling with the contradictions of being a respected teacher and a man with a past that others constantly rewrite.

Each letter is a story and a critique, from absurd encounters that turn violent to reflections on masculinity, love, and rage. The book offers a look at what it’s like to be surveilled by the FBI, all while dealing with the pressures of everyday life.

Letters to My FBI Agent asks the question, “When the world insists you are a monster, what does it take to remain fully human?”

About the Author

Josh Fernandez is an antiracist organizer, a father, runner, fighter, English professor, and writer whose stories have appeared in Spin, the Sacramento Bee, the Hard Times, and several alternative newsweeklies. PM Press published his book The Hands That Crafted the Bomb: The Making of a Lifelong Antifascist in 2024. He lives in Sacramento, California.

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