In this Book
- All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. Borderlands
- Book
- 2017
- Published by: The University of North Carolina Press
summary
After a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull home--only to discover that her native South Texas had been radically transformed in her absence. Ravaged by drug wars and barricaded by an eighteen-foot steel wall, her ancestral land had become the nation's foremost crossing ground for undocumented workers, many of whom perished along the way. The frequency of these tragedies seemed like a terrible coincidence, before Elizondo Griest moved to the New York / Canada borderlands. Once she began to meet Mohawks from the Akwesasne Nation, however, she recognized striking parallels to life on the southern border. Having lost their land through devious treaties, their mother tongues at English-only schools, and their traditional occupations through capitalist ventures, Tejanos and Mohawks alike struggle under the legacy of colonialism. Toxic industries surround their neighborhoods while the U.S. Border Patrol militarizes them. Combating these forces are legions of artists and activists devoted to preserving their indigenous cultures. Complex belief systems, meanwhile, conjure miracles. In All the Agents and Saints, Elizondo Griest weaves seven years of stories into a meditation on the existential impact of international borderlines by illuminating the spaces in between and the people who live there.
Table of Contents
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- Introduction: The Descendants
- pp. xi-xviii
- Prologue: Nepantla
- pp. 1-4
- 1 The Miracle Tree
- pp. 7-15
- 2 The Rebel
- pp. 16-25
- 3 The Venerable
- pp. 26-34
- 4 The Activist and the Ordinance
- pp. 35-53
- 5 The Bonder and the Dealer
- pp. 54-72
- 6 The Agents
- pp. 73-81
- 7 The Wall
- pp. 82-101
- 8 The Chokepoint
- pp. 102-109
- 9 The Woman in the Woods
- pp. 110-129
- 10 The Healing
- pp. 130-142
- Part II: The New York–Canada Borderlands
- pp. 143-144
- 11 The Sort of Homecoming
- pp. 145-149
- 12 The Trade
- pp. 150-160
- 13 The War
- pp. 161-177
- 14 The Saint
- pp. 178-193
- 15 The Activist and the Obelisk
- pp. 194-208
- 16 The Movement
- pp. 209-219
- 17 The Mother Tongue
- pp. 220-232
- 18 The Bridge
- pp. 233-242
- 19 The River
- pp. 243-256
- 20 The Words That Come Before All Else
- pp. 257-270
- Epilogue: The United States of In-between
- pp. 271-274
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 275-276
- About the Author
- p. 291
Additional Information
ISBN
9781469631615
Related ISBN(s)
9781469631592, 9781469631608, 9798890851659
MARC Record
OCLC
987252075
Pages
312
Launched on MUSE
2017-06-07
Language
English
Open Access
No