NAMED A TOP 10 BOOK OF 2018 BY NPR and THE WASHINGTON POSTWINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN CURRENT INTERESTFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE NONFICTION AWARDThe instant New York Times bestseller, “A must-read for anyone who thinks ‘build a wall’ is the answer to anything.” –EsquireFor Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of … –Esquire
For Francisco Cantú, the border is in the blood: his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, raised him in the scrublands of the Southwest. Driven to understand the hard realities of the landscape he loves, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners learn to track other humans under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Plagued by a growing awareness of his complicity in a dehumanizing enterprise, he abandons the Patrol for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and does not return, Cantú discovers that the border has migrated with him, and now he must know the full extent of the violence it wreaks, on both sides of the line.
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I’m doing research on the areas along the U.S./Mexico border wall for my next Sam Westin novel, so I picked up this book, from which I learned a LOT. The author is Mexican-American, spent his childhood down by the border, and worked as a Border Patrol agent, so his stories are authentic. He tells them largely without bias, leaving the reader to make up his or her own mind about how to feel about each situation. If you’d like to know what it’s really like to be a Border Patrol agent along the Mexican border, you should read this book.
There is a line dividing what we know and do not know. Some see the world from one shore and some from the other. Cantú brings the two together to a spiritual whole. My gratitude for this work of the soul.
A beautiful, fiercely honest, and nevertheless deeply empathetic look at those who police the border and the migrants who risk — and lose — their lives crossing it. In a time of often ill-informed or downright deceitful political rhetoric, this book is an invaluable corrective.
Francisco Cantu’s story is a lyrical journey that helps bridge the jagged line that divides us from them. His empathy reminds us of our humanity — our immigrant history — at a critical time.
Cantú’s story, and intelligent and humane perspective, should mortify anyone who ever thought building a wall might improve our lot. He advocates for clarity and compassion in place of xenophobia and uninformed rhetoric. His words are emotionally true and his literary sensibility uplifting.
This book tells the hard poetry of the desert heart. If you think you know about immigration and the border, you will see there is much to learn. And you will be moved by its unexpected music.
A book about border patrol, who would want to read that? Well, that’s what I thought before I read this book, and I’m amazed with how much I was impacted by it.
I am the last person who would have ever chosen to read this book, but as part of a reading challenge, I began reading it. By the end of the first section, I was so intrigued with Fransico and his personal experience that I sent this book to my dad for him to read as well. Section two brought tears to my eyes as I read about some of what happens. Then on to section three and the personal aspect brought to the pages, I was saddened and angry and confused as to how this could be happening.
This book not only brings a vast amount of political history to the pages, but pulls the reader in to the personable aspect as well. Reading Francisco’s experience with the border patrol makes me want to find ways to help others. I think that was part of why Francisco wrote this book: to open our eyes and hearts to those around us. Please make sure to not only read this book, but to look at the amazing organizations mentioned at the end that are working towards making a better place for us all.
This memoir is a combination of the author’s reflections on time as a US Border Patrol officer, snippets of Mexican history, and reflections on assisting his friend who went to Mexico after 30 years in the US and couldn’t return because he was not a citizen.
Each important topic in this memoir could be its own book, so it merely scratches the surface of them. That may be for the best as some segments, especially those outlining the treatment of migrants by the coyotes “assisting” them to cross to the US, were extremely violent and difficult to read.
I felt it was quite fragmented but a helpful introduction from a person who had first-hand experience with matters that are often in the news but quite removed from my daily life.
The true story of a disillusioned Mexican-American border guard and the people he helps and those he arrests. Not very well written. Reads a bit like a translation, which it is not. However, the section at the end about the immigration hearings of an illegal immigrant (30 years in the USA) is very touching.
Oh, this is a breathtaking book. Perhaps the most stunning book I’ve read in a very, very long time. Here is a moral questioning of what it means to witness the plight of immigrants who attempt to cross and recross the border into the United States.
After graduating from college, Francisco Cantu–second generation immigrant American–takes a job with the Border Patrol in New Mexico and later in West Texas. The description of the austere, physical beauty of the borderlands is woven in with the bleak–terrible–experiences of migrants crossing. There is such compassion towards all the participants, including the people who work the Border Patrol. This is an unforgettable book and important. You must read this.
Beautifully written, lyrical, heartbreaking, brutal and sublime are all words describing Francisco Cantú’s book about the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. After graduatiing from university studying international relations, Cantú decides to learn about The Border firsthand so that he can learn more about his Mexican heritage. So he works for the U.S. Border Patrol for four years. While working as a BP agent, he experiences everything we know about the Border and Border Patrol: acts of kindness and acts of brutality, irrational policies, and plenty of human suffering. He begins to have reoccurring dreams of a wolf approaching him, and he fears for his own sanity. He writes about “moral injury” referring to trauma caused by participating in a moral transgression, often against one’s will. This term most often refers to soldiers in war but can also apply to law enforcement or, in this case, work in the U.S. Border Patrol.
In the final section of the book, Cantú befriends and attempts to help an undocumented worker who has spent most of his life in the U.S., is married, the father of three children, and a diligent worker and taxpayer. The man returns to Oaxaca briefly to visit his dying mother, and then finds that he cannot return to the U.S. despite repeated attempts. Yes, he is the kind of man we want as a citizen. And yet, the entire system is so irrational that he cannot find his place in America. It’s easy to say that those who insist on building a higher, longer wall or who demonize all immigrants, legal or otherwise, should read this book. Will they? Sadly, I doubt it.