equinox

 Look up and find the north star and know where you are. Watch the moon rise or set and know when you cannot see it, still it is there, a silent companion, unjudging, always present. When the sun rises and you face its rays you are literally reoriented. Understandable, then, that people always have drawn upon the changes and constancies in the skies for a sense of where and who they are. More involved is the understanding behind equinox. Every year predictably feature writers remind us that the days grow shorter as nights grow longer, and vice versa. They tell us that traditional feast days of many cultures coincide with the changes of the seasons, and with the long and short of days and nights. In between the longest and shortest are the equinoxes, the times when day and night are roughly equal, equidistant between the polar opposites of midwinter night and midsummer day. These are also occasions for observance of the heavens’ changes, and of our own. We see around us the seasons progress (or it seems, recede) around the solar revolution of the planet. We see the changes in plant and animal, weather and cloud. And we see in ourselves our reactions, some subtle, some not. “Are you ready for some football?” is not the least profound of our responses to changes in the year. Shopping for clothes and shoes, a box of pencils or an eraser or a backpack, or at last a new tablet, mark the beginning of a new school year. We find new paths to old places as rains carve new channels in the washes, and enjoy old paths that take us someplace new as seasons run. It all seems very benign, innocuous, … unless the day comes when a storm or sunstroke overwhelms us. Our desert is not benign, it is neutral. It is indifferent. What we do in it, for ourselves or others, is up to us. It will be hot or cold, brutally severe or calmingly luxurious, depending on our situation. If we find again that people are in need or want or distress because of the extremities of our weather, the fault, dear friends, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.

blessing the fleet

The annual blessing of the fleet— of water trucks—went well today. Regular volunteers and board members were joined by Buddhist Jewish Lutheran and Episcopal clergy as well as the current vice-mayor of Tucson. Attendees gladly laid their hands on the trucks, at the invitation of our convener, adding their own blessings...

Humane Borders Blessing of the Fleet Participants, March 31, 2019

The Rev. John Leech
Priest of the Episcopal Church

Rev. Mateo Chavez
Pastor, San Juan Bautista, Lutheran Spanish Language congregation

Vice Mayor Richard Fimbres
Life long resident of Tucson,
32yr career in Tucson Sheriff's Dept. 
US Army Vet during Vietnam era

Br David Buer, OFM
Franciscan Friar .. intentional small community living

Rabbi Avraham Alpert
Cantor, Congregation Bet Shalom

Abbot Ajahn Sarayut Amanta
Tucson Buddhist Meditation Center and Wat Buddhametta

The Rev. Steven Keplinger 
Rector, Grace-St Paul's Episcopal Church

Dinah Bear
Chair for Humane Borders Board of Directors

Rev. John Hoelter
Director, Humane Borders

https://humaneborders.org/

Here is the prayer that I offered on Sunday afternoon 31 March 2019:

Bless these trucks,
accompany their crews, 
as you accompany us
in all our journey --

LORD prepare us to receive
the gift of the stranger.
Even as they are far off
let us embrace them as
long lost family. May we not
be jealous of your Bounty
but fully let the living water
of your love refresh
the wanderer, the homecomer,
the lost, the bereaved,
the watchful, the joyous,
and all in the name
of your Love. Amen.

"You are always welcome here!"

Spiritual Formation at St Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Tucson - Epiphany Season 2016

During Epiphany season our between-services course was entitled, “Welcoming the Hidden Christ – Meeting the Challenge of Migration and Hospitality,” from the Gospel saying “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” (Matthew 25:35) We discussed such questions as: How can we as a community offer respite for refugees and strangers? What actions are we, both individually and as a community, taking to welcome the stranger — the hidden Christ? Engendering lively discussions among ourselves, we welcomed presenters from local organizations that offer hospitality to migrants and refugees.

First we had a visit from John Heid of Casa Mariposa who reconnected with old friends Carol and Kate Bradsen, and Fred Bevins. Casa Mariposa through its Restoration Project has provided hospitality to recently released detainees (from ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and visited people in detention in Eloy. (“Nourished and empowered by the Spirit, the Casa Mariposa community seeks to live in right relationship with one another, the community, and the earth through hospitality, simple and sustainable living, playful spirituality, and peaceful, prophetic action. The Restoration Project is work carried out by the community of Casa Mariposa in support and solidarity with women and men being held in immigration detention centers in Florence and Eloy, Arizona.”) In addition they witness to the challenge of migration and hospitality through participation in community events such as the Día de los Muertos Pilgrimage to Mission San Xavier del Bac, the All Souls Procession through downtown Tucson, and the Binational Las Posadas at the Nogales Sonora/Arizona border.

Toetie Oberman and Sang Yeon spoke to us about the work of two ministries of Lutheran Social Services of the Southwest, Refugee Focus and Center. (“LSS-SW resettles approximately 1,000 refugees each year as they strive toward previously unknown goals, strengthen newfound bounds, and courageously rebuild their lives. Services include: pre-arrival housing, case management, English classes, navigating transportation and basic public services, employment support, after-school activities and tutoring for children, programs to develop self-sufficiency and skills for women, and immigration services. CENTER is a hub for refugee students, parents, teachers, schools, volunteers, and other nonprofits that work with them across Tucson.”)

Sunday February 7^th, we plan to greet Jamie Flynn from Alitas, a program of Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona. (“The Alitas Program serves migrant women and children who have left their home countries to escape violence and poverty. We provide care, short-term shelter and help to reunite with family members in the U.S.”)

Refugee Focus and the Alitas Program welcome refugees from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The other local agency that provides hospitality to refugees arriving from overseas is The International Rescue Committee of Tucson – and they will be with us to celebrate Mardi Gras!

During Lent our spiritual formation course will be built around the ancient practice of lectio divina (sacred reading) …

St. Andrew's Episcopal Church

Tucson, Arizona

"You are always welcome here!"

http://standrewstucson.azdiocese.org/

sparks

 

John R. Leech (USA): Recently I have observed and participated in a variety of border and immigration ministries in southern Arizona and northern Mexico, from hospitality (el comedor, Kino Border Initiative, Sonora) to deportation proceedings (Special procedures court, ‘Operation Streamline’, Tucson federal courthouse), from keeping vigil at el Tiradito shrine, remembering those who have died crossing the desert, to training with Tucson Samaritans, and serving at the comedor with Samaritans of Sahuarita and Green Valley.

I have spoken with members of St Michael and All Angels and St Andrew’s Episcopal Churches in Tucson, and with volunteers of the Casa Mariposa/Restoration Project, who have been meeting people at the Greyhound bus station in Tucson, people recently released from detention by ICE/Border Patrol.

This autumn the big news had two parts. First, the Tucson bus station began receiving eighty people a night, women with children, released with instructions to appear for a hearing within a month at an immigration court – presumably near family already in the United States – lest an order for removal close their case. No warning. Just dropped off.

Second, the incredible news that the Border Patrol has flown a thousand kids from Texas to Arizona and then put them into a warehouse (I’ve seen it from the road – it is meant for pallets of flour, not for people) in Nogales, AZ. These are unaccompanied minors from Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras), refugees from violence and extreme poverty. The warehouse serves as a temporary (promise: 72 hours) detention facility. It is on La Quinta Road near the truck crossing into Mexico.

The ongoing need for change in policy and practice, compassionate work for change and a deeper understanding of our fellow human beings – exploited and caught in the middle of a gigantic and ongoing crisis – and the need to reach out in love across boundaries: all this continues.

One thing I have been thinking about lately is that this situation is similar to so many others in humanitarian relief and development work: there is an immediate crisis that gets our attention – and an ongoing problem that needs lasting sustained effort.

All of a sudden on our own southern border is an immense influx of refugees, in two remarkable groups, women with children seeking to be reunited with their families, and unaccompanied minors, mainly teenagers but also younger children, who have been sent north without adults.

Preponderantly these people have come north through Mexico from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Why? Besides a sell-job by human smugglers, there are economic and political reasons for this migration.

People come to Arizona to work, to re-unite with their families, or to find and begin a new chapter in their life.

We need to practice a theology of hospitality – a spirituality of migration. We were strangers once too. So – an ongoing need is there. The need for change – in our national policies, in our practices of welcome, in our influence on conditions in other countries, in our attitudes toward the ‘foreigner’ – continues.

(“Sparks of the Light”, Coracle, the quarterly magazine of the Iona Community, Winter 2014, 13-14)  

http://iona.org.uk/media/coracle/

Welcoming the Hidden Christ - reading list

Gray-Reeves, Mary, and Michael Perham. The Hospitality of God: Emerging Worship for a Missional Church. New York: Seabury Books/Church Publishing. 2011.

Morris, Clayton L. Holy Hospitality: Worship and the Baptismal Covenant. A Practical Guide for Congregations. New York: Church Publishing. 2005.

Pratt, Loni Collins, and Daniel Homan, O.S.B. Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press. 2002.

Smith, Gary, S.J. Radical Compassion: Finding Christ in the Heart of the Poor. Chicago: Jesuit Way/Loyola Press. 2002.

Spellers, Stephanie. Radical Welcome: Embracing God, The Other, and the Spirit of Transformation. New York: Church Publishing. 2006.

prayer for the migrant

Prayer for the Migrant, from the program at the conclusion of the pilgrimage to San Xavier du Bac Saturday 31 October 2015 organized by Derechos Humanos to remember those who have died crossing the desert in the past year:

Creator, full of love and mercy, I want to ask you for my migrant brothers and sisters. Have compassion and protect them, as they suffer mistreatment and humiliations on their journeys, they are labelled as dangerous, and marginalized for being foreigners.

Make them be respected and valued for their dignity. Touch with your goodness the many that see them pass. Care for their families until they return to their homes, not with broken hearts  but rather with hopes fulfilled. Let it be.

Ruth and Facebook

My sermon this Sunday begins on Facebook:

News Feed

John Leech

November 1 at 7:35pm ·

733 pm during World Series game nov1 first xmas related commercial aaagh

Like   Comment   Share

Lisa  and Lois  like this.

Comments

Diane   Hallmark channel started showing 24-7 holiday movies a few days ago. Last year, I think they ran into January. Do you have any idea how many really bad holiday movies there are? Yikes!

Like · Reply · November 2 at 6:02am

John Leech The hallmark movie plot : she finally meets the right man. Grandma is happy.

Like · Reply · 1 · November 2 at 8:25am

John Leech The hallmark Christmas movie plot: she finally meets the right man, just in time for Christmas. Grandma is very happy.

Like · Reply · November 2 at 8:26am

Diane  Got it in one, unless it's the equal opportunity version where the guy is looking for the right woman! LOL

Like · Reply · November 2 at 8:26am

The story of Ruth that we read today is a lot like a Hallmark Channel movie - at first glance. A capable woman meets a righteous man, marries him, settles down, and they have a child. Grandma is happy. 

But the story did not start that way. The four-episode story of Ruth begins with a much graver situation than you'll find in any Hallmark movie.

As the story begins a woman leaves her hometown of Bethlehem - where there is no bread: it's a time of famine - and travels with her husband and her two sons across a couple of boundaries. They cross the valley of the Jordan to an unlikely place, the unfriended land of Moab. But there is food there. And her sons find wives. But her husband dies and after ten years her sons die as well. She is left, in that ancient patriarchal culture, without male support. Husbands and sons were the security for women. Without them the woman - the women - fall to the bottom of society.

The woman hears that the famine is over in her homeland, and so she makes plans to return. Her daughters-in-law accompany her part of the way but she discourages them. She has no husband and no prospect of sons. She cannot hold out hope to them that, in-laws as they are - but now to become foreigners in a strange land - they would find any comfort there.

Orpah goes back. Fair enough. Ruth surprises her mother-in-law and vows to continue with her, to stay in relationship with her, and indeed to adopt her homeland and her family - and her God - as her own. So forsaking all others she goes with the older widow on her journey.

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God:
Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me.

When they arrive it is early spring. The barley harvest is beginning. It's the first sign of hope, as episode one closes.

In episode two, the women of Bethlehem welcome home their relative, Naomi. But Naomi is bitter at this point and sees no happy way out of her circumstance. Bereft of husband and sons, and prospect of a child, she has little left. Except Ruth.

Ruth with permission from her mother-in-law becomes a gleaner, one of the poor ones following the harvesters as they reap the grain. And she is seen. The owner of the field approaches, speaks his appreciation of all she has done. She has taken care of her mother-in-law, leaving all her other support behind her. He blesses her for seeking protection under the wings of God.

The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to trust.

The man, Boaz, sees that Ruth has placed her total trust in God. He praises that. And he looks after her that day and sees that she does not go home empty-handed. Naomi is glad to hear how the day went for Ruth and indeed notices that the owner of the field was none other than her own close relative. A hopeful ending to episode two.

Episode three begins some weeks later as the harvest season is coming to a close. Naomi, now in much better spirits, has come up with an idea. And so Ruth seeks out Boaz - and the upshot is here in today's reading. She seeks shelter under his wing - for life. And in episode four, we get the happy ending. Ruth and Boaz marry, and Naomi gets a grandchild.

But remember where we started and see the story as a whole. The book began with six characters, three men and three women, only two of whom survive to the second chapter. From exile the older woman returns to her own land, and with her comes a woman who is seeking safety, shelter, and a new home in a place she has never been before. God bless you, says a new friend, for what you have done. And the story turns away from famine, scarcity, and sorrow to abundance, fullness, and joy.

That is the story of Ruth - an immigrant and a widow - who found a welcome in the household of God, among the people of God in a place she had never known, that now she would make her home.

Questions I am asked and challenged by:

What do you do to make a home of a place you have never been before? And what do you do to make your place a home for the alien, the widow, the stranger, and those seeking a new life in a place they have never been before?

Ten or eleven years ago at the bishop's conference on the border (organized by Tom Buechele) some one asked if there were any Bible passages about borders and migration. Three came to mind, right away:

"My father was a wandering Aramean,..." or, as the King James has it, "A Syrian ready to perish was my father,..." (Dt 26.5) This is the story of how Jacob, patriarch of the Hebrew people, migrated to a foreign land in a time of famine.

"You were strangers once in Egypt...." (Dt 10.19) "Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt."
 This is an admonishment to the people of Israel to extend hospitality to foreigners. And even, at Passover, to welcome them into their homes for the family dinner on an equal footing with themselves.

And the kicker:

"I was a stranger and you welcomed me." (Mt 25.35) Jesus at the final gathering of all peoples responds with welcome to those who have been welcoming...



When I first came to southern Arizona eleven years ago I had to find ways to make it home. One advantage I had was a bit of history of my own from long ago: my grandfather was a forest ranger in the Arizona territory before the first world war. And my future parents-in-law met at the University of Arizona. But family connections are not enough. I had to get to know the place, the land, the fauna and flora. And I had to get to know the story of Arizona, the stories of the people who live here.

Those stories are many, and carry on. Among them are many stories of people who have come to Arizona for work, for family, or to start a new and better life. There are people who have fled war, civil strife, or natural disaster. Famine. And there are those who find here a fresh start in a place of abundance. They are welcomed. There are some who are greeted with an attitude of scarcity, of not sharing. (Where I once lived in another state, we called this "closing the door behind you" as all of us had been immigrants not long since.)

The story of Ruth - of Naomi and Boaz and the people of Bethlehem - gives us hope. It gives us a story of welcome and hospitality. It gives us in quiet ways a story of how God can work with what we have - even if it is only two women who stick together in hard times - and make a new thing begin.

How do we make something bloom in the desert? How do we make ourselves at home in a new time or a new place? How do we begin to welcome home those who have been long away? Or those who have never been under our roof before?

And how do we celebrate the welcome of God to all of us as God welcomes us into his house, his hospitality, and we find shelter under his wings?



8 November 2015
Twenty Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 27

Ruth 3:1-5; 4:13-17
Psalm 127
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44


Notes for a sermon given at St. John's Episcopal Church, Bisbee, Arizona. JRL+

migrant spirituality reading list

 

Suggestions for Further Reading – Migrant Spirituality

(Cadged from Marjorie King, Suzanne Hesh, Bob Phillips, and Roxanne Ramos)

Readings about migrants in Southern Arizona

Ferguson, Kathryn, Norma A. Price, and Ted Parks. Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010.

Regan, Margaret.  Detained and Deported: Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire. Boston: Beacon Press, 2015. This Tucson Weekly columnist takes an intimate look at the people ensnared by the US detention and deportation system, the largest in the world.  Using volatile Arizona as a case study, with special attention to the separation of families and the treatment of women, she conjures up the harshness of the detention centers and travels to Mexico to report on the fate of deportees stranded far from their families in the United States. The book is a humanizing and rare glimpse into the lives of those caught up in the US immigration enforcement cycle.

Regan, Margaret.  The Death of Josseline: Immigration Stories from the Arizona Borderlands.  Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.

Urrea, Luis Alberto.  The Devil’s Highway: A True Story. New York: Back Bay Books, Little, Brown Publishing, 2004.

Migration and the Church

Brown, Robert McAfee. Unexpected News: Reading the Bible with Third World Eyes. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984. 

Carroll, M. Daniel R.  Christians at the Border: Immigration, the Church, and the Bible. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, Baker Publishing, 2008.

Campese, Gioacchino, CS. El Via Crucis de Jesus Migrante, The Way of the Cross of the Migrant Jesus. Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2006. 

De La Torre, Miguel A. Reading the Bible from the Margins. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002.

Groody, Daniel G. and Gioacchino Campese, editors. A Promised Land, A Perilous Journey: Theological Perspectives on Migration. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Kim, Fr. Simon C., compiler. El Via Crucis: The Migrant’s Way of the Cross. Liguori, MO: Liguori Press, 2013.

Maruskin, Joan M.  Immigration and the Bible: A Guide for Radical Welcome. New York: Women’s Division, The General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church, 2012.

Myers, Ched and Mathew Colwell. Our God is Undocumented: Biblical Faith and Immigrant Justice. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2012.

Shaull, Richard and Richard Falk. Naming the Idols: Biblical Alternatives for U.S. Foreign Policy. Meyer-Stone Books, 1988.

Soerens, Matthew and Jenny Hwang Yang. Welcoming the Stranger: Justice, Compassion and Truth in the Immigration Debate, Westmont, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009.

Bowden, Peg. Land of Hard Edges: Serving the Front Lines of the Border. (Tucson: Peer Publishing, 2014)

Dear, Michael. Why Walls Won't Work: Repairing the US-Mexico Divide. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Oscar Martinez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail. (Verso, 2013)

Montoya, Mace. The Deportation of Wopper Barraza: A Novel. (2014)

Cross-Border Tour Suggested Reading List (Border Community Alliance)

The Country Just Over the Fence, Paul Theroux, article NYT 2/26/2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/travel/nogales-mexico-a-few-steps-and-a-whole-world-away.html?pagewanted=all

A Culture of Cruelty: Abuse and Impunity in Short-Term U.S. Border Patrol Custody, No More Deaths, 2011, http://www.nomoredeaths.org/Abuse-Report-Culture-of-Cruelty/View-category.html

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story, Luis Alberto Urrea, Bay Back Books 2005

Documented Failures: The Consequences of Immigration Policy on the U.S.-Mexico Border, Michael S. Danielson, American University, Report prepared for the Kino Border Initiative Nogales, Arizona, U.S.A. and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico with funding from Catholic Relief Services of Mexico, http://www.jesuit.org/jesuits/wp-content/uploads/Kino_FULL-REPORT_web.pdf

La Frontera: The Border, blog by BCA board member, Peg Bowden, www.arroya.org

Manifest Destiny | Luis Alberto Urrea | Orion Magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6813/

Mexico: What Everyone Needs to Know, Roderic AI Camp, Oxford University Press 2011

Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070: A Case Study for State-Sponsored Immigration Policy, an honors thesis by USF graduate student and BCA/FESAC summer 2012 intern Ryan Murphy is available by contacting BCA at the address below.

Why Walls Won’t Work – repairing the US-Mexico divide, Michael Dear, Oxford University Press, 2013.

Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico, The United States, And The Road Ahead By Shannon K. O'Neil, Oxford University Press, Inc. 2013

Border Community Alliance

In partnership with Fundación del Empresariado Sonorense A.C. (FESAC)

La Entrada de Tubac / 2221 E. Frontage Rd., Building F, Suite 201 / Tubac, AZ / 520.398.3229

Mail: PO Box 1863, Tubac, AZ. 85646

Kino Border Initiative (KBI) Movie List 

By: Roxane Ramos

Over the past two decades, many films have addressed the trials and struggles, hopes and dreams of families and individuals who cross the U.S.–Mexico border to seek a better life and to be with loved ones. In addition to the titles listed below, there are also My Family (1995), Sin Nombre (2009), and A Better Life (2013).

Now a classic and one of the first movies about the struggles and hardships facing those who choose to migrate to the U.S., El Norte (1983) by Gregory Nava relates the experience of a teen-aged brother and sister who flee the violence of their home in Guatemala for the promise of a better life in Los Angeles.

Among the four narratives Alejandro González Iñárritu includes in Babel (2006), one details the interwoven lives of a San Diego family and their undocumented Mexican nanny and how crossing the border to attend a family wedding can result in painful and irreparable consequences.

Under the Same Moon (2007), directed by Patricia Riggen, makes palpable the dire and complicated decisions faced by separated families. An adolescent boy leaves Mexico after his grandmother dies to seek out his mother who works as a maid in the U.S.

In Who Is Dayani Cristal? (2013), actor and activist Gael García Bernal retraces the journey of a migrant who died along the stretch of desert known as “the corridor of death,” providing a rare view of what migrants experience on el camino. Each year 400–500 migrants lose their lives during the crossing. For more information about the tragedy of migrant deaths in the desert, please see this article from the KBI July issue of Passages: www.kinoborderinitiative.org/deaths-in-the-desert/.

Documented (2013), a film by Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist José Antonio Vargas, recounts Vargas’s experience of migrating to the U.S. at the age of 12 from the Philippines to live with his documented grandparents. Vargas speaks out about his undocumented status in the hopes of illuminating the challenges of mixed-status families and advocating for policy change.

https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/kbi-movie-list/ July 14, 2015.

KBI Reading List By: Roxane Ramos

The list below covers only a small selection of the books available about the migrant experience, immigration and border life. They include works of fiction, non-fiction volumes, art books, memoirs, and children’s books, and all help to inform us about the issues of immigration, cultural challenges, family separation and even basic survival.

Non-fiction:

The Devil’s Highway: A True Story
 Luis Alberto Urrea, Little, Brown and Company, 2004.

Enrique’s Journey
 Sonia Nazario, Random House, 2006.

The World of Mexican Migrants: The Rock and the Hard Place 
Judith Adler Hellman, New Press, 2008.

Dead in Their Tracks: Crossing America’s Borderlands in the New Era 
John Annerino, University of Arizona Press, 2009.

Crossing With the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail
 Kathryn Ferguson, Norma A. Price and Ted Parks, University of Arizona Press, 2010.

Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.–Mexico Border
 Rachel St. John, Princeton University Press, 2011.

Run for the Border: Vice and Virtue in U.S.–Mexico Border Crossings 
Steven Bender, NYU Press, 2012.

The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail 
Oscar Martínez, Verso, 2013.

Up Against the Wall: Reimagining the U.S.–Mexico Border
 Edward S. Casey and Mary Watkins, University of Texas Press, 2014.

Memoir:

Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
 Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa (with Mim Eichler Rivas), University of California Press, 2011.

Crossing Borders: Personal Essays 
Sergio Troncoso, Arte Público Press, 2011.

Taking Hold: From Migrant Childhood to Columbia University
 Francisco Jiménez, HMH Books for Young Readers, 2015.

The Land of Hard Edges: Serving the Front Lines of the Border
 Peg Bowden, Peer Publishing, 2014.

Fiction:

Women Hollering Creek and Other Stories
 Sandra Cisneros, Vintage, 1992.

The Long Night of White Chickens
 Francisco Goldman, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1992.

Under the Feet of Jesus
 Helena María Viramontes, Plume, 1996.

Mother Tongue 
Demetria Martínez, One World/Ballantine, 1997.

The River Flows North
 Graciela Limón, Arte Público Press, 2009.

The Madonnas of Echo Park: A Novel 
Brando Skyhorse, Free Press. 2011.

Art:

Ambos Nogales: Intimate Portraits of the U.S.–Mexico Border
 Lawrence Taylor, School of American Research Press, 2002.

Crossings: Photographs from the U.S.–Mexico Border 
Alex Webb, Essay by Tom Miller, Monacelli Press, 2003.

Curating at the Edge: Artists Respond to the U.S./Mexico Border
 Kate Bonansinga, University of Texas Press, 2014.

Children: My Name Is Jorge (poems for ages 4–8)
 Jane Medina, WordSong, 1999.

My Diary from Here to There/Mi diario de aqui hasta allá (for ages 7–10)
 Amada Irma Pérez, Children’s Book Press, 2002.

From North to South/Del norte al sur (for ages 6–9) 
René Laínez, Children’s Book Press, 2010.

In my Family/En mi familia (for ages 7–12) 
Carmen Garza, Children’s Book Press, 2013.

Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote: A Migrant’s Tale (for ages 6–9)
 Duncan Tonatuih, Harry N. Abrams, 2013.


Return to Sender (for ages 8–12)
 Julia Alvarez, Yearling, 2013.

https://www.kinoborderinitiative.org/kbi-reading-list/ July 14, 2015.