Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border

by Luis Alberto Urrea

Book Overview

Luis Alberto Urrea's Across the Wire offers a compelling and unprecedented look at what life is like for those refugees living on the Mexican side of the border--a world that is only some twenty miles from San Diego, but that few have seen. Urrea gives us a compassionate and candid account of his work as a member and "official translator" of a crew of relief workers that provided aid to the many refugees hidden just behind the flashy tourist...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385425309
• ISBN13: 9780385425308
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

who cares about objectivity.

people who read this book need to understand that this book is going to be biased. in the beginning the author explicitly states that this book is going to be his personal account about his experience of the border life in Tijuana. people who want truth about the hardships these people face need to pick up this book and read it. i read it for a class that i am interning for and i work in a homeless youth shelter in the city of Tijuana and i see so many similarities of this life. i see the children and have to ask myself where and how did these children end up on the streets. why have they chosen this life, a life of hardship and chaos? Never knowing when your time is up or who that person down the street is beating up or for my case, how can there be a drug house next door to these children? this book is a very emotional account of those that have gone as far as they could only to end up a step closer to that freedom. this book definitely opened my eyes to those who have come this far only to continue to struggle. searching in the dumps for food, living on a piece of land where you could be kicked off in a instant, only to be more homeless than you already are. this is a story, a true srory, that will hopefully open the eyes of all who read this book. it is an account of hope and survival, quite often things that you or me need not to worry about. the people who are talking about immigration reform and who are hoping to make it alot more strict because they feel "their country" is being overrun by illegals, need to pick up this book. you need to step out of your bubble and volunteer with a group that goes across the wire to the other side, the true other side. not revolution avenue, but go into the city, go to houses on the hills. go and see the way these people live and then ask yourself if you have the right to complain about those people who are trying to make a better life for their families and themselves.

comments can be deceptive...

I'm basically writing this review because I feel that the comments posted here do not reflect how beautiful this book actually is. It was assigned reading during a Chicano Studies course I took last quarter, and quite literally changed the way I look at the Mexican-US border. Too often we on this side of the border are shown a VERY diluted picture of life on the border, and NEVER a complete picture. I felt that this book helped to fill in the gaps in my own bias. There is nothing cruel, nothing romantic, nothing emotional about this book. It presents a sring of events told objectivly by the author, for our own emotional responses to perceive however we choose. A fairly short book made of extraordinarily powerful yet short anecdotes, you'll find it VERY hard to not finish this in one sitting. HIGHLY recommended; one of my favourite books of all time, that has not been given the mainstream acclaim it deserves.

Not for the cold-hearted

This book, plain and simple, is about truth: the truth about the distribution of wealth in the world and the truth about the abject poverty our own hoarding of wealth produces. Those reviewers who find it simply an indictment of Americans "who work hard for what they get" insult the five or so billion people in the world who work just as hard as we allegedly do--and probably more--yet end up living from hand to mouth, day to day. It is an incredible pathology of the rich, lazy and fat that they attribute their incredible wealth (relative to say, Tijuana) and the poverty of others to such things as "work" and "initiative". This book clearly shows how fraudulent these claims are. You want initiative and hard work? Try picking through the trash dump every day to feed your family--as opposed to simply saving up for a new home theater system.

a modern tale of dante's inferno yet lyrical, but real

This book is a must read for anyone who cares to understand Mexico's border life. Pieces of his stories will haunt you for days, months, or years. He writes in such a manner that innocently seeks your mind but in the end it will garner oh so much more. I only wish he could then tell us how the other side of Mexico lives or can live with such abject poverty (In Mexico, over 40 million out of 90 million live in poverty--17 million live in severe poverty, NAFTA, ye all shall be free..).

From the moment you see the first word, you'll be tugged

You'll be tugged into a fascinating world that cannot be as close as it is, cannot be as dire as it is nor cannot be as tender as it is. But it is. And each word you read will tug you to stand up and DO something about it, shout out in frustration at the unfortunate happenings of people you will grow to care about as much as the author does. The beauty of it all is that the author never sentimentalizes or forces it at you. He just says it as he sees it. And he has a beautiful set of eyes.