Puro Border: The Story Of La Frontera From Many Angles

By Wuicho Vargas

Puro Border, edited by Bobby Byrd, John William Byrd and Luis Humberto Crosthwaite.

This book is an excellent source of all types of literary material and the theme that circumnavigates the book overall is border life, which is the central to getting the attention of our local students in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The majestic use of folklore and the exquisite venturing into the regional language accents and colorizes every passage in the book with a feeling of familiarity and amazement.

The magnificent use of pictures, graphs, poems, corridos and structure strategically placed, independently give a story of their own, and then you get to read the content and become entangled into another world aside from the visual.  Every element in the art of writing becomes engaged in this great book composed of many elements that are perfectly stirred and smoothly swirled inside this huge pot of succulent tasty literary menudo.

As if the mixture were not enough to bribe any enthusiastic reader or the not-so-enthusiastic reader, every story, shot and passage, in this book is filled with well-written stories. In the first lines of this book, the reader could easily misjudge and be misguided by the sometimes shocking information this book exposes, but then as the feeling dissipates, the real book exposes itself.  Through short stories, charts, photos, corridos we see simple moments of crossing the bridge, then, the violent harsh reality that exists in Mexico.

This book has it all.  Happy and sad, once the reader becomes really engaged with this book the pendulum of feelings swings back and forth, confusion and questioning arises from stories, along with laughter from some absurd, yet veridical, events that happen on the border.

The border, as I always picture it in my dreams and with every gasp of air I take in around this area, is a gap between two nations, neither Mexico nor America. It’s solely and purely “the border.”  Puro Border, via the use of several genres, tries and succeeds at certain points to envelop the huge and ever-changing chameleonic, challenging face of the border. This book is up to speed with so many eccentricities of our region that it cannot be forgotten and buried with time.

I, Luis Vargas, would totally recommend this book, con capa y espada (with cape and sword), to everyone that lives around the border area, and to those who would like to take a dip inside our pool during our everlasting hot summers.  So, go ahead and dip yourself in our backyard, we have plenty of food and great tasting tortillas.

Wuicho Vargas is a writer who lives in McAllen, Texas.

Subscribe today!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Must Read