To grow up on the border is to grow up privileged. Not in the material sense. The Río Grande Valley of South Texas, where I was born and raised, remains one of the poorest regions of the United States. It is a privilege—or at least it was for me—because of the region’s binational, bicultural, and bilingual core. And yet that benefit is often threatened by national policies that see the border as a division rather than a bridge. The politics of fear and divisiveness frequently frame the border as the “thin edge of / barbwire,” as the great Chicana intellectual who also grew up in the Río Grande Valley Gloria Anzaldúa once put it.
In a small attempt to challenge that and instead reframe the border as a place to be celebrated, I sat for a short interview about growing up on the border.
Many thanks to Michelle Pistone and the folks at Fwd.us for making this possible.
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