“A taxi,” writes Marcello Di Cintio, “is a border.” Under the familiar roof light of every cab is a space both private and public: accessible to all, and yet, once the doors close, strangely intimate—a space in which two strangers who might otherwise never have met share a five or fifty minute trip.

Quotidian themselves, taxis transcend everyday barriers between the wealthy and the working class, white people and people of colour, those who give direction and those who follow, those who speak and those who listen—and yet, though driver and fare are close enough to reach out and touch one another, most trips are characterized by complete silence. In a series of interviews with North American taxi drivers, their backgrounds ranging from the Iraqui National Guard, to the Westboro Baptist Church, to an arranged marriage that left one woman stranded in a foreign country, Marcello Di Cintio seeks out those missed conversations, revealing the untold lives of the people who take us where we want to go.

Paperback: 280 pages
Series: Untold Lives
Publisher: Biblioasis
Release Date: May 4, 2021
Subjects: Social Science Anthropology Cultural Emigration Immigration Travel Canada