The Wind Doesn't Need a Passport: Stories from the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands / Edition 1

by Tyche Hendricks

Overview

Award-winning journalist Tyche Hendricks has explored the U.S.-Mexico borderlands by car and by foot, on horseback, and in the back of a pickup truck. She has shared meals with border residents, listened to their stories, and visited their homes, churches, hospitals, farms, and jails. In this dazzling portrait of one of the least understood and most debated regions in the country, Hendricks introduces us to the ordinary Americans and Mexicans who live there—cowboys and Indians, factory workers and physicians, naturalists and nuns. A new picture of the borderlands emerges, and we find that this region is not the dividing line so often imagined by Americans, but is a common ground alive with the energy of cultural exchange and international commerce, burdened with too-rapid growth and binational conflict, and underlain with a deep sense of history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520252509
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/01/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tyche Hendricks covered immigration and demographics for many years at the San Francisco Chronicle. She is an editor at KQED public radio and a lecturer at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Table of Contents

Map of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands x

Introduction 1

1 Elsa: "We Want to Hold Our Kids Close Forever" 14

2 McAllen/Reynosa: "Most People Here Work in the Maquiladoras" 31

3 Hachita: "A Fence is Only as Good as Its Weakest Point" 54

4 Nogales/Nogales: "If They Get Sick Here, We Care For Them" 79

5 Sells: "O'Odham First and American or Mexican Second" 98

6 Mexicali: "The Wind Doesn't Need a Passport" 121

7 Jacumba: "The Border is a Sham" 145

8 Tijuana: "A Constant Drumbeat of Killings" 167

Conclusion 191

Acknowledgments 205

Notes 209

Selected Bibliography 231

Index 237

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Succeeds masterfully in making the daily life and communities on both sides of the border jump off the page in all their multi-dimensional glory."—San Francisco Chronicle

Through vivid storytelling, Hendricks illuminates not only the unique history of the borderlands, but its people, culture, and politics."—Zócalo Public Square

"A gift. . . . We've got to educate ourselves if we're ever going to have meaningful immigration reform. Hendricks' book is a good entry point."—Cape Cod Times

"Hendricks has diligently investigated and explored the borderlands, and the result is her fascinating and (for the willing) eye-opening monograph."—The Morning News

Editorial Reviews

Succeeds masterfully in making the daily life and communities on both sides of the border jump off the page in all their multi-dimensional glory.

San Francisco Chronicle

Anyone interested in border issues, from an academic or lay perspective, will appreciate this book.

Foreword

Hendricks’s stories bring [the borderlands] to life.

Western American Literature

“Succeeds masterfully in making the daily life and communities on both sides of the border jump off the page in all their multi-dimensional glory.

San Francisco Chronicle

Tyche Hendricks traveled along both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border to document ordinary lives in an extraordinary environment.

Washington Post Book World

Through vivid storytelling, Hendricks illuminates not only the unique history of the borderlands, but its people, culture, and politics.

Zócalo Public Square

Hendricks has diligently investigated and explored the borderlands, and the result is her fascinating and (for the willing) eye-opening monograph.

The Morning News

A gift. . . . We've got to educate ourselves if we're ever going to have meaningful immigration reform. Hendricks' book is a good entry point.

Cape Cod Times

Through vivid storytelling, Hendricks illuminates not only the unique history of the borderlands, but its people, culture, and politics.

Zócalo Public Square