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Written by Cristina Garcia

• Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
• Publisher: Vintage
• On Sale: October 10, 2006
• Price: $13.95
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7718-2 (1-4000-7718-4)

about this book

As the descendants of Mexican immigrants have settled throughout the United States, a great literature has emerged, but its correspondances with the literature of Mexico have gone largely unobserved. In Bordering Fires, the first anthology to combine writing from both sides of the Mexican-U.S. border, Cristina García presents a richly diverse cross-cultural conversation.

Beginning with Mexican masters such as Alfonso Reyes and Juan Rulfo, García highlights historic voices such as “the godfather of Chicano literature” Rudolfo Anaya, and Gloria Anzaldúa, who made a powerful case for new forms of language that reflect bicultural experience. From the fierce evocations of Chicano reality in Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Poem IX” to the breathtaking images of identity in Coral Bracho’s poem “Fish of Fleeting Skin,” from the work of Carlos Fuentes to Sandra Cisneros, Ana Castillo to Octavio Paz, this landmark collection of fiction, essays, and poetry offers an exhilarating new vantage point on our continent–and on the best of contemporary literature.


"In an age that reduces lo mexicano to a nefarious stereotype, this assortment of literary delights will allow shrewd readers to appreciate the richness of a millenarian civilization."
—Ilan Stavans, Professor of Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst College

“A marvelous introduction to some of the most luminous and illuminating voices to be found in the Chicano/a and Mexican literary traditions, offering a fascinating and resonant dialogue among them.”  

—Rafael Pérez-Torres, Professor of American Literature and Chicano Studies, UCLA