"The Haunting of the Mexican Border is a breathtaking work of art. Ferguson's artistry shines in her prose, polished and raw in a perfect combination, and her ability to convey the beauty and power of humanity."—Story Circle Book Reviews
"Ferguson's prose is transcendent, effortless, lifting off the page with the eye of a smart filmmaker who finds just enough detail to tell the imagination where to go but leaves off before laying on so much as to drown out that self-steering vision."—Santa Fe Reporter
"An important account of how the [Mexican borderlands] region continues to serve as a 'haunting' presence as well as a space whose history, stories, and art need to be more deeply appreciated and understood on the other side of the border."—Southwestern American Literature
"[Ferguson's] prose is marked by a deep kinetic awareness of how her physical presence as an American, a woman, and a traveler affects the migrants and indigenous tribal members she encounters during her filming expeditions."—Pasatiempo
"As a documentarian, Ferguson brings a journalistic approach to the material, providing context for the in-the-moment situations she describes, and the book itself provides useful context for the border as a whole."—Foreword Reviews
"Ferguson's book is more than a memoir. It is an adventure story toughened by sore feet from walking and walking and walking steep, narrow paths."—Albuquerque Journal
"A wise and humane account that draws on a lifetime of exploring the border country and pondering its meaning."—Kirkus Reviews
"This is an important book at the right time. We need to read this story and understand its vision. Recommended."—Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil's Highway: A True Story
"An unforgettable memoir that takes readers south to Rarámuri country then north into Arizona's militarized culture of terrorized immigrants and the people who stand up for them. The writing is exquisite, descriptive, action packed, and deeply meditative. The book reads like a novel; I couldn't put it down."—Demetria Martínez, author of Mother Tongue
"With a rare woman's perspective, Kathryn Ferguson masterfully guides us through treacherous, hardscrabble geography and psychology where two different worlds both clash and meld. This is a must-read for anyone intending to live in and understand twenty-first-century America."—Marc Cooper, author of Pinochet and Me: A Chilean Anti-Memoir
2015-06-01
A memoir that grapples with life, death, and documentary filmmaking on the United States-Mexico border. Ferguson (co-author: Crossing with the Virgin: Stories from the Migrant Trail, 2010) grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and lived much of her life in the gorgeous yet dangerous terrain of the border country. A dance instructor who developed a passion for documentary filmmaking, she devoted seven years to creating a film about the indigenous Rarámuri people of Mexico. In the subtle first half of her memoir, the author recounts the tumultuous process that led to The Unholy Tarahumara (another name for the Rarámuri), which premiered in 1998. Ferguson is a sensitive writer, wary of excessively exoticizing the land and the people she meets, but she beautifully conveys the sense of wonder she feels with every trip across the border. That wonder turns to barely controlled rage, however, in the book's second half, as Ferguson looks in the other direction, at migration from Mexico to the U.S. She describes how migrant deaths surged in the mid-1990s, from an annual average of 14 to several hundred—the equivalent, she writes, of a large passenger plane crashing into the desert every year. Outraged by the unfolding humanitarian crisis and the increasing militarization of the border, she joined groups that provide aid to migrants and began work on her next documentary, about a Rarámuri migrant woman who spent years held unjustly in an American psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, she suspected that, due to her activism, the government was watching her. She was detained and arrested by mysterious federal agents in the desert, and she began a relationship with a Mexican man who, despite his visa, lives in constant fear of deportation. A wise and humane account that draws on a lifetime of exploring the border country and pondering its meaning.
