Bookshelf

Interested in the subject? Lourdes Gutierrez Najera recommends three books and a film:

Across the Wire: Life and HardTimes on the Mexican Border, by Luis Urrea (Anchor, 1993). A Mexican-born Americans first-person encounter with the people of Tijuana, a personal view of a city known for poverty and vice.

Coyotes: A Journey Through theSecret World of America's IllegalAliens, by Ted Conover (Vintage,1987). The author's personal journey as he lives, works and crosses the border alongside undocumented workers.

The U.S. Mexican Border in the 20thCentury, by David E. Lorey (SRBooks, 1999). A concise, accessible history of the border written by a historian.

Lone Star, a film written and directed by John Sayles (1996). All sorts of borders, physical and metaphysical, come together in one Texas border town—Mexicans and Americans, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, blacks and whites. It reveals the complexity of relationships along the border.