Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail |
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| Title: | Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail |
| Author: | Ruben Martinez |
| Publisher: | Picador |
| Type: | Book / Paperback |
| Publication Date: | 07 September, 2002 |
| ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0312421230 / 9780312421236 |
| List Price: | $16.00 |
| You Save: | $5.12 |
| Amazon Price: | $10.88 |
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This book is also available, brand-new, from 3rd-party marketplace sellers at Amazon.com, from $5.85.
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Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
Product Description
The U.S.-Mexican border is one of the most permeable boundaries in the world, breached daily by Mexicans in search of work. Thousands die crossing the line and those who reach "the other side" are branded illegals, undocumented and unprotected. Crossing Over puts a human face on the phenomenon, following the exodus of the Chávez clan, an extended Mexican family who lost three sons in a tragic border accident. Martínez follows the migrants' progress from their small southern Mexican town of Cherán to California, Wisconsin, and Missouri where far from joining the melting pot, Martínez argues, the seven million migrants in the U.S. are creating a new culture that will alter both Mexico and the United States as the two countries come increasingly to resemble each other.
Amazon.com Review
Not since Ted Conover's Coyotes has a book revealed the underground culture of illegal immigration from Mexico as well as Crossing Over by Rubén Martínez. This up-and-coming author writes of what he calls "a Mexican Manifest Destiny" that continually pierces the southern borderline of the United States--a "line [that] is still more an idea than a reality." Martínez begins with the awful story of the three Chávez brothers, all killed when a truck carrying them and some two dozen other illegal aliens tried to outrace border patrol agents and flipped. Martínez learns of their fate and travels to their peasant hometown in southern Mexico to distil the motives of migrants. Then he follows the rest of the family north as they fan into the United States. Crossing Over is written in the first person and is highly anecdotal, but Martínez constantly makes observations that break free from these narrow confines. "Mexicans have always had an uncanny instinct for finding the soft spots of the American labor economy," he notes at one point, explaining how it is that millions of poor people who barely speak English can thrive, in their way, north of the border. Crossing Over is an outstanding book, and required reading for anyone interested in Hispanics and the new America. --John Miller
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Customer Reviews:
• A Real Eye Opener
15 July, 2009
I purchased "Crossing Over" for a southwest history class and read it cover to cover in one weekend. It was an excellent and easy read but it certainly did open my eyes to the struggle of those living below the border. Although I will never agree with illegal border crossings, at least I now have a better idea as to why it happens; what drives so many to risk their lives and leave their families in search of a better life.
- Amazon Customer Review
• Crossing Over
17 March, 2008
A very sad story of just one of so many Mexican families struggling to survive between Mexico and America. This book will keep you reading until you finish. An incredible story of incredible people. Much of the book I read to my two teenage sons, for a better appreciation of their life as American born young men.
- Amazon Customer Review
• This Is An Excellent Read For Adults, Especially With The Historical Backdrop The Author Provides
06 October, 2009
Ruben Martinez's engaging and authoritative account of the Chavez family's struggle to live in Cheran, Mexico and work in the U.S. illustrates how the long-time U.S. message "We have jobs for you" has changed to "We have jobs for you, but you'll have more trouble getting across the line." Three Chavez brothers were killed as victims in a high-speed chase crossing the border. Martinez followed migrant workers to California, Arkansas and even Norwalk, Wisconsin where he found the Enriquez family working the night shift in a meatpacking plant. Martinez, whose grandfather came to the U.S. as a field hand, brings the readers right into small village life in Southern Mexico--through the treacherous border crossings and into the toxic fields where migrants toil. This is an excellent read for adults, especially with the historical backdrop the author provides.
- Amazon Customer Review
• We Moved To Mexico ...
08 August, 2007
We got sick to death of Bush et all and left. Moved to Mexico and are having a house built here. Will never live back in the US again.
So we were wondering why people of Mexico would want to risk death getting there - it's for the money.
The earlier book "Coyote" is also very good.
- Amazon Customer Review
• The Border Is Closer Than You Think...
21 January, 2008
In fact, Ruben Martinez argues that it's more of a legal fiction than a division that clearly separates one culture from another. The boundary between the U.S. and Mexico is better thought of as a permeable membrane which allows cross-over from both directions. North American culture passes south of the border to influence the values and lifestyles of Mexicans--even remote Indian ones such as the folks in the small southern town of Cheran whom Martinez tracks. Similarly, Mexican culture passes north of the border to influence the values and lifestyles of gringos. It's this reciprocal migration that's the real story of Crossing Over.
One of the best features of this book is that Martinez takes us deep into Mexico to live in the village of Cheran so that we can get to know the families who will later cross the border in their own element. He helps us see them as people rather than stereotypes, complete with all their warts and blemishes but also with quite lovable traits: Wense, the young family man who seems to live in a state of constant indecision; Rosa, his wife, who shows surprising strength and independence; Anita, who has a vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Watsonville, California; the Chavez family, who cope with a migration tragedy that sets Martinez on the trip that ended in this book; and an assortment of tough-guy cholos who dress in oversized polyester and mystical brujas who combine paganism and Catholicism in colorful and unself-conscious ways.
But even in their own element south of the border, the Mexicans Martinez comes to know have ingested gringo aspirations that are frequently in conflict with indigenous traditions, Likewise, once they migrate north, white bread commuities in West Virginia, Wisconsin, Missouri, and elsewhere find themselves acclimating and being influenced by the new brown presence. Borders are permeable. Borders are fictional. Especially in a global economy, cultures inevitably intermingle. At one point in the book, Martinez stands on the fictional line separating the U.S. and Mexico and gleefully hops back and forth across it. This is a nice encapsulation of Crossing Over's larger message.
- Amazon Customer Review
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