Border Crossing
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Overview
Fiction. In this debut novel, Maria Collen Cruz creates the vibrant voice of a girl just on the brink of understanding. With her journal at her side, this thoughtful and creative character tackles complicated issues of identity and self-empowerment The things Ceci Alvarez does not know about her father's family send her riding rails from Los Angeles to Tijuana, Mexico in order to piece together the mysteries behind a set of her Nana's photographs. Tony, a lively young teen Ceci meets on the train, leads her from one country to the next, and challenges her to see Mexico as "green and brown. It's little villages with big farms, and lots of grass, and towns where electricity is something not everyone has. It's spicy chiles, juicy tomatoes, and light tortillas. It's music, and laughter, and pride".
Eleven-year-old Cesi knows all about her mother's Cherokee and Irish family but little about her father's Mexican heritage, and when she finds no answers at home in California, she sets out on alone for Tijuana.
Synopsis
Eleven-year-old Cesi knows all about her mother's Cherokee and Irish family but little about her father's Mexican heritage, and when she finds no answers at home in California, ...
Francisca Goldsmith - KLIATT
Twelve-year-old Cesi decides to go to Tijuana in order to better understand her father. For years, Cesi has wondered why he isn't more forthcoming about his own youth and his half of her heritage. Her curiosity is bolstered by overheard snatches of conversations between her parents and her Spanish-speaking paternal grandmother, as well as by her discovery of photographs that seem to show a hardscrabble boyhood for her father. Determined to unearth understanding if not hard facts, she takes the train to San Diego and then the trolley to the border. Conveniently, she meets a boy about her age—but a more seasoned solo traveler—aboard the train and accepts his invitation to tag along with him as he visits his aunt in Tijuana. In a few short hours, Cesi has her money stolen, faces her racial prejudices, and discovers that her new friend is also a distant cousin. Reunited with her worried parents, she is taken to her father's boyhood home in Arizona, so she can see it for herself. While this story begins well and the action builds nicely through both flashbacks and Cesi's present trip across the border, there are a lot of coincidences for the reader to swallow whole, while actual resolution seems a bit sketchy. In fact, Cesi's father's past is never really explained at a level that would satisfy the average 12-year-old on such a mission. However, there is food for thought for middle school readers living in more homogenous communities than Cesi's: what does it mean to be bicultural in contemporary American society? As bibliotherapy, this book is a good conversation starter, but as story, it is the outline of a plot yet to be fully realized. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for juniorhigh school students. 2003, Arte Publico Press, Univ. of Houston, 122p., Ages 12 to 15.
Editorials
Children's Literature
Twelve-year-old Cesi is not a run away: she describes herself as a run to. When she slips away from her Southern California home to take the bus to Tijuana, Mexico, she's on a quest to recover her father's long-denied Mexican roots. Cesi's grandmother says that Cesi's father is embarrassed to be Mexican, and neither he nor her grandmother seem able or willing to answer her questions about his Mexican past. Cesi decides that an unauthorized odyssey to Mexico is her only chance to "learn something about this person I was becoming. . . . Somehow, my dad, Mexico and I all had a lot in common, or at least had worked together to make me the person I was today. I had to go." The novel alternates between chapters relating Cesi's journey to Mexico with chapters detailing the various frustrations that led her to go. The Mexican chapters are more compelling than the fairly quiet at-home chapters, but it's hard to accept that the likeable boy Cesi meets on the bus, who serves as her Mexican tour guide, just happens to be her long-lost cousin who reunites her with family members able to reveal her father's childhood experiences of cruel anti-Mexican prejudice. "Things like this didn't happen in real life," Cesi exclaims. No, they don't. It's nonetheless moving to hear Cesi's father's painful story and to watch Cesi reclaim this lost portion of her complex family heritage. 2003, Pinata Books/Arte Publico Press, Ages 9 to 12.—Claudia Mills
KLIATT
Twelve-year-old Cesi decides to go to Tijuana in order to better understand her father. For years, Cesi has wondered why he isn't more forthcoming about his own youth and his half of her heritage. Her curiosity is bolstered by overheard snatches of conversations between her parents and her Spanish-speaking paternal grandmother, as well as by her discovery of photographs that seem to show a hardscrabble boyhood for her father. Determined to unearth understanding if not hard facts, she takes the train to San Diego and then the trolley to the border. Conveniently, she meets a boy about her age—but a more seasoned solo traveler—aboard the train and accepts his invitation to tag along with him as he visits his aunt in Tijuana. In a few short hours, Cesi has her money stolen, faces her racial prejudices, and discovers that her new friend is also a distant cousin. Reunited with her worried parents, she is taken to her father's boyhood home in Arizona, so she can see it for herself. While this story begins well and the action builds nicely through both flashbacks and Cesi's present trip across the border, there are a lot of coincidences for the reader to swallow whole, while actual resolution seems a bit sketchy. In fact, Cesi's father's past is never really explained at a level that would satisfy the average 12-year-old on such a mission. However, there is food for thought for middle school readers living in more homogenous communities than Cesi's: what does it mean to be bicultural in contemporary American society? As bibliotherapy, this book is a good conversation starter, but as story, it is the outline of a plot yet to be fully realized. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for juniorhigh school students. 2003, Arte Publico Press, Univ. of Houston, 122p., Ages 12 to 15.—Francisca Goldsmith
VOYA
Twelve-year-old Cecilia Maryann (Cesi) Alvarez, half Mexican, half Irish-Cherokee, knows little about her father's background, and she wonders why he never talks about his childhood or school years. He even avoids speaking Spanish and seems embarrassed about being Mexican. Her questions haunt Cesi, and when she comes upon old photographs of people about whom she knows nothing but who resemble her father, Cesi decides to find out for herself. Under the excuse of spending the weekend with a girlfriend, Cesi travels from her home in Los Angeles to San Diego and then to Tijuana, Mexico, to try to learn more about her ancestry. Along the way, she meets handsome teenaged Tony, who is also going to Mexico, and he becomes her guide. In Tijuana, Tony introduces Cesi to his aunt, Delfina, who coincidentally is related to Cesi's father, grew up with him, and has some interesting information for the curious girl. The plot in this somewhat autobiographical story is flimsy and clearly contrived. The character development is sketchy, and the narrative is lackluster and not easy to follow. Most of the undated journal entries in chapter form alternate between past and present, a tricky device that is not always successful, disrupting the flow of the story. In today's real world in which frequent headlines tell of young people being victimized by predators under the most ordinary of circumstances, the thought of a trusting young girl undertaking such a foolish adventure is disturbing at best. A cautionary note, warning that no reader should be tempted to imitate Cesi, would have been welcome. VOYA Codes 2Q 2P J (Better editing or work by the author might have warranted a 3Q; For the YA with a specialinterest in the subject; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9). 2003, Pinata Books/Arte Publico, 144p., Trade pb. Ages 12 to 15.—Delia A. Culberson