The Permit that Never Expires: Migrant Tales from the Ozark Hills and the Mexican Highlands

Philip Garrison keeps his eyes and ears open. And he also keeps an open mind. It helps that he's bilingual, because a lot of his neighbors these days speak Spanish and he likes to know what's on their minds. Like his epileptic friend Pera, who asks him to write a note in English to explain to her supervisor that she probably shouldn't be cooking on a grill in case she has a seizure and falls into the flames. When Garrison asks her if she has a work permit, she replies,"Bueno. El que nunca vence." The kind that never expires. That's the sort of response he doesn't forget.

There is a river, Garrison writes, that runs from Oaxaca to British Columbia. El flujo migratorio, he calls it. The migratory flow. But it isn't a conventional sort of river. "It is made of neither rock nor water nor wind but only of motion, of momentum. And yet . . . it is the most compelling feature in the entire U.S. West," he claims. Garrison has his feet planted firmly in the middle of this river of humanity, wondering why America is trying to build a wall along an actual river, the Rio Grande, to keep us separated from the mexicanos. All borders, he writes, exist mostly in the imagination--a point he proves decisively in this delightful book.

Garrison is an award-winning writer and this book shows why. Warm, witty, self-deprecating, and charming (the list could go on), this collection illuminates the lives of these migrants, whether at the local food bank in Ellensburg, Washington, in the streets of Michoacán, or everywhere in between.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Published: 03/15/2010
ISBN: 9780816528318
Pages: 112
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 9.16h x 5.94w x 0.32d

Review Citations: Reference and Research Bk News 11/01/2010 pg. 73