It's Monday! What are you reading?

 A side benefit of attending the virtual #CTXLIBCAMP this summer was purchasing a signed copy of They Call Me Güero:  A Border Kid's Poems by David Bowles, a Pura Belpre Honor Book/ Bluebonnet Award nominee. 

Since I'm a fan of Cinco Puntos Press, I also bought a copy of The Everything I Have Lost by Sylvia Zéleny.

I didn't mean to purchase them as paired readings...but they are exactly that.  Two different perspectives about life in the border towns of Texas and Mexico--the former in the Valley, the latter in my former home of El Paso.  Güero and Julia are both in middle school, both twelve years old, and both use writing to record, reflect, and reminisce about their lives.  Güero is a free-form poet, and Julia, a diarist.  Family is central to their stories.  

Güero's poems are light in spirit.  A trip over the bridge to Mexico with his father introduces us to his world.  His description of border culture, the mix of Spanish and English, his father's words about the flow of culture uninterrupted by imposing border walls is joyous.  Güero's family celebrates the traditions of Mexico even as they are solidly rooted in the United States.  There is violence, but it is the school-bully kind, overshadowed by multicultural friendships and a librarian mentor.  Life on the border may include suspicious looks from border control agents, but for Güero, it is a good life.

Julia's diary entries are full of young teen angst and more questions than answers.  Her waning childhood innocence is blossoming into awareness of the very real violence present in her everyday life.  The story opens in Juárez with the family car being stolen--no one seems too surprised, just annoyed.  The anniversary of a pope's death prompts Julia to ask, "How did this guy die?  Was he shot in the street?  Did they light him on fire?  Was he kidnapped?  How did it go down?"  In her worldview, people don't just die--they are murdered.  When the family is awakened by the sound of bullets, she is comforted with the fact that her father owns a gun and can protect them.  Life in a border town is "living on the edge."

It's Monday, and I've got paired books at hand.  Are there books you would pair on your shelves?