On good days I feel I am a bridge. On bad days I just feel alone,
the author writes in this riveting collection of sixteen personal essays in which he seeks to connect the humanity of his Mexican family to people he meets on the East Coast, including his wife's Jewish kin. Raised in a home steps from the Mexican border in El Paso, Texas, he crossed what seemed an even more imposing border when he left home to attend Harvard College. Initially,
outsider status
was thrust upon him; later, he adopted it willingly, writing about the Southwest and Chicanos in an effort to communicate who he was and where he came from to those unfamiliar with his childhood world. He wrote to maintain his ties to his parents and his abuelita, and to fight against the elitism he experienced at an Ivy League school. I was torn,
he writes, between the people I loved at home and the ideas I devoured away from home.
The author writes to preserve his connections to the past, but he puts pen to paper just as much for the future. In his three-part essay entitled Letter to My Young Sons,
he documents the terror of his wife's breast cancer diagnosis and the ups and downs of her surgery and treatment. Other essays convey the joys and frustrations of fatherhood, his uneasy relationship with his elderly father and the impact his wife's Jewish heritage and religion have on his Mexican American identity. This collection reveals a writer, father and husband who has crossed linguistic, cultural and intellectual borders to provoke debate about contemporary Mexican American identity. Challenging assumptions about literature, the role of writers in America, fatherhood and family, these essays bridge the chasm between the poverty of the border region and the highest echelons of success in America. They are written with the deepest faith in humanity about sacrifice, commitment and honesty.