Puro border : dispatches, snapshots, & graffiti /

Noreteno co-editor Bobby Byrd, a poet, describes the border as a place where "antiheroes" flourish in a "sort of anti-place, like a vacuum in the collective unconsciousness." Nearly 50 writers, photographers and illustrators from both sides of the border use portraits, statistics and poetry to mold a complicated, multidimensional likeness of the area. The editors set the stage with a measured rallying cry-"We are restless. We are angry." Yet in chapters like "Everything is Going to be Different" and "May Our Daughters Come Home," contributors express a tremendous range of emotions. This is, in some ways, a project about love, as is plain when Luis Alberto Urrea reveals his true feelings about "Tijuana Wonderland." It is also an activist's book, as when Maria Jimenez says that part of her work is "increasing public awareness that we are an abused community," or in the included lists of murdered women of Juarez or statistics about labor costs in Mexico. There is tremendously humorous riffing on stereotypes, such as Roberto Castillo Udiarte's "Johnny Tecate Crosses the Border Looking Sort of Muslim." Yet many writers place La Frontera deep within the personal: Crosthwaite calls the border his girlfriend: "There are girlfriends we are boastful about and there are girlfriends we guard like an expensive secret. This one I have locked away in my heart." From "Ropa Usada" to "Towers of Crap," it is exactly this kind of nuanced exploration of contrasts that animates this collection. It brings Mexican-American relations to a human scale with pride and without sentimentality. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

In this startling collection of writings from both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border, freelance journalists, newspaper reporters, a few academics, and an assortment of other writers and artists take a harsh look at life, inequality, and injustice on the border. Thirty individual selections range from poetic verse to a chilling list of nearly 300 women of Juarez murdered since 1993. Another details the tragic murder of a young woman employed by a maquiladora-a U.S.-owned manufacturing firm operating in Mexico that pays substandard wages-and the unusual lawsuit brought by the girl's parents against the U.S. corporation. The death of a drug kingpin in the border community of Ojinaga reads like a movie script, while an account of a used clothing store shows its lasting impact on the southwest Texas border. Cinco Puntos pursues an active agenda on border studies, and this anthology, introduced and coedited by publisher Bobby Byrd, stands out among the recent crop of books on the subject. It should be required for collections focusing on border issues and the growing tensions in U.S.-Mexican relations.-Boyd Childress, Auburn Univ. Lib., AL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.