Under the Bridge/ Bajo el puente: Stories from the Border/ Relatos desde la frontera (English and Spanish Edition)

Rosario Sanmiguel

ISBN 10: 1558855149 / ISBN 13: 9781558855144

Published by Arte Publico Press, 2008

About this Item

This book is in good condition with very minimal damage. This is an ex-library book with stickers and markings. Pages may have minimal notes or highlighting. Cover image on the book may vary from photo. Ships out quickly in a secure plastic mailer.

Seller Inventory # RDV.1558855149.G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Under the Bridge/ Bajo el puente: Stories from the Border/ Relatos desde la frontera (English and Spanish Edition)
• Publisher: Arte Publico Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1558855149
• ISBN 13: 9781558855144
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

In the title story of this short story collection set along the Texas-Mexico border, young Monica waits for her boyfriend Martin under the bridge connecting El Paso and Ciudad Juarez. Martin is a pasamojados, someone who smuggles people across the river. When he asks Monica if she wants to leave with him, she's afraid. Afraid to suffer the way her parents did when they went north, suffocating in heat and fear, unable to find a job. But in spite of her fears, she finds herself at the river bank, being pushed into the tire tube that serves as a raft.
Mexican writer Rosario Sanmiguel crafts intriguing narratives about solitary women in search of their place, caught between the past and the present. The stories follow these women - some from privileged backgrounds and others from desperate circumstances - through seedy bars, hotel rooms, and crowded streets of the border.
Originally published in Mexico as Callejon Sucre y otros relatos, John Pluecker's translation captures the nuances of border dialect and irony. The seven stories interweave the opposing themes of solitude and connectedness, longing and privilege, fear and audacity, all of which are juxtaposed on the boundary of self-awareness.

About the Author

ROSARIO SANMIGUEL, a native of Manuel Benavides, Chihuahua, Mexico, is the author of a novel, Arboles o apuntes de viaje (PuenteLibre Editores, 2006) and a collection of stories, Callejon Sucre y otros relatos (Ediciones del Azar, 1994). Her work has been published in several anthologies and magazines, including Sin limites imaginarios, Cuentos del norte de Mexico (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, 2006). She is the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and Mexico's Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. She lives and works in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.

JOHN PLUECKER received his undergraduate degree in Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies from Yale University and his master's degree in Spanish at the University of Houston in 2007. His fiction and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Julie Mango, Altanoche, and New Texas, and his non-fiction has appeared in Clamor Magazine and El Diario de Tampico. He wrote an introduction for Under the Texas Sun / El sol de Texas (Arte Publico Press, 2007) by Conrado Espinoza.