Review: The Line Becomes a River
Francisco Cantú has written a book that’s part anthropological field work, part journalism, part memoir, part disputation, and part vision quest. That description sounds like a recipe for a patchwork of artifice, but Cantú has constructed a work that is much more difficult to describe than it is to understand. It can be difficult to read, of course; people are risking their lives in this world every day.
His topics, the southern US border, the policies around crossing it, and the Border Patrol that is the first point of enforcing them, are themselves a patchwork of emotion, history, and ideas. People feel and think strongly about them and often they have no coherent way to express them in toto. Cantú’s multi-faceted approach both illuminates the topics and articulates his views. That articulation varies from matter of fact description to dream interpretation.
It doesn’t always work, of course. There are passages that seemed overwrought to me. It is clear he’s picking the incidents and anecdotes he relates to hang them on his themes. Taken as a whole, I do find it moving and thought provoking.
It’s worth pointing out that his experiences all took place before the 2016 presidential election. However one might think this has all changed since then, Cantú is clear that there was plenty of complexity and emotion here initially.
I want to put in a good word for the author’s mother. She’s an incidental but powerful character. I’d devour a biography of her.
Strongly Recommended.