The Border Chronicle’s Second Annual Summer Reading List for Border Nerdz

Still no sign of the monsoon rains, and we’re on track to reach 104 Fahrenheit today in Tucson, with hotter temperatures predicted to come. In honor of the snarling dog days of summer, The Border Chronicle will be taking the rest of July off. Todd was last seen on a plane headed for Canada, and I’ll soon be departing for a family trip to Mexico.

But fear not, Todd and I will be back in August with new articles and podcasts. In the meantime, we’re leaving you with a list of summer reading recommends, which we hope you will enjoy.

We want to thank you for reading (and listening to) The Border Chronicle. We wouldn’t exist without you. And we’re proud to report that since our September 2021 launch, we’re now at 8,000 subscribers. You can help us reach our goal of surpassing that number by sharing The Border Chronicle with your friends and family. Also, please consider supporting our work with a paid subscription, which helps us with reporting travel costs, and paying our wonderful editors, Pablo Morales and Steev Hise.

As a special incentive, we’re offering a 20 percent Monsoon Special in honor of the desert summer rains, which keep the Sonoran Desert blooming. Available until July 31, the discount means an annual $60 subscription is just $48. A deal!

Have a happy (and cool) summer!

Solito, a Memoir, by Javier Zamora (Hogarth, 2022) I had the pleasure of hearing Zamora read from his book in Tucson, shortly after it was released. A prizewinning poet, Zamora, at the age of nine, made the treacherous journey from his family’s small town in El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents in California, who had fled the civil war. It took many years for Zamora to come to terms with the difficult and deadly journey through the Sonoran Desert, and he purposefully moved to Tucson to tackle those demons to write his memoir. Zamora’s mastery of language and his perspective as a child migrant traveling alone in a world of confusing adults and conflict is a harrowing page-turner. It’s a lyrical and heartbreaking tour de force that will stay with you long after you finish the last page.

The War within the Words: An Intellectual History of the “Narco” in Mexico (1975–2020), by Oswaldo Zavala (Penguin Random House, 2022) How many movies, books, and podcasts exist about the drug war and “narcos” in Mexico? Zavala turns conventional mainstream narratives about the “good guys” and “bad guys” in the cartel wars on its head and disassembles the drug war narrative. Zavala, from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is a professor of Latin American literature and one of the sharpest critics today challenging entrenched and preconceived ideas about what the drug war in his homeland is or isn’t. Todd has done two fascinating podcasts with Zavala (a Border Chronicle favorite) about his new book The War Within the Words (currently available in Spanish only) and Drug Cartels Do Not Exist.

The Migrant Chef: The Life and Times of Lalo García, by Laura Tillman (W. W. Norton, 2023) Before Tillman moved to Mexico City, she was a border reporter in Texas. That’s where I first became aware of Tillman’s excellent work. Mexico City’s Máximo Bistrot, which blends a Parisian sensibility with Mexican ingredients and flavors, has scored many international awards and is one of the city’s hottest restaurants. The owner and chef, Eduardo “Lalo” García Guzmán, has a rags-to-riches story. As a child, he picked fruits and vegetables with his parents on the U.S. migrant farm route. A teenage García Guzmán then worked in restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia, before being convicted of a robbery, jailed, and then deported to Mexico. Starting with nothing, García Guzmán worked his way to the top of the international food scene. Tillman spent five years chronicling his life story and journey from the onion fields of Vidalia, Georgia, to Dubai’s first high-end Mexican restaurant, and the labyrinthine streets of Mexico City.

Unsettling: The El Paso Massacre, Resurgent White Nationalism, and the U.S.-Mexico Border, by Gilberto Rosas (John Hopkins University Press, 2023) On August 3, 2019, a White, far-right extremist fatally shot 23 Mexicans and Mexican Americans in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, citing a “Hispanic invasion” and parroting great replacement and invasion language used by elected officials in Texas. Rosas, a professor of anthropology and Latina/o studies, unpacks 30 years of divisive border rhetoric, ever-punishing immigration enforcement, and inhumane treatment at the border, which culminates in the mass shooting in El Paso.

Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration, by Alejandra Oliva (Astra House, 2023) Oliva, a translator and immigrant advocate who has worked with asylum seekers since 2016, weaves her own family’s story of migration, and crossing the Rio Grande, along with those of the people she meets along the way while working as a translator in imposing court rooms and crowded migrant shelters. Oliva, a former divinity student, threads her lyrical book with deep moments of faith, poetry, and tough realities as she delves into the Kafkaesque world of U.S. immigration policy.

But wait, there’s more! A summer shout-out to awesome, independent investigative border journalism outlets. Check out our friends at La Verdad Juárez and El Paso Matters. And for borders beyond the U.S. and Mexico, delve deeper into Lighthouse Reports (which I also work for as an editor) and Long Road Magazine. In May, I interviewed Long Road’s cofounder, Patrick Strickland.