Because I Don't Have Wings: Stories of Mexican Immigrant Life

Garrison, Philip

Item Information

ISBN: 0816525250
Release Date: 2006-04-01

Purchase for $16.95

Garrison has taught in Mexico's central highlands and Washington's central valleys, and for the past decade he has helped run a food bank serving Mexican immigrants in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. In telling their stories, he weaves together the centuries-old history of the immigrants' origins in Michoacan, their cultural and religious customs, and their struggle to keep these traditions alive. Garrison relates horrific tales of border crossings gone badly, but what he really wants to convey is the often hidden feelings of his friends who live a five-day drive away from their homeland. Some sleep in shifts in two--bedroom trailers, some under tarps, but they always reassure newcomers that "yes, you really do get accustomed to life here." What keeps them going, Garrison believes, is el pinche mexicano, a state of mind that means one is simultaneously cursed and blessed. With trips home all but impossible due to border tightening after 9/11, this is really the only community these workers can count on.