Because I Don't Have Wings: Stories of Mexican Immigrant Life [Paperback]

Philip Garrison (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0816525250 | ISBN-13: 978-0816525256 | Publication Date: April 1, 2006 | Edition: First Edition

For Mexican workers, the agricultural valleys of the inland Northwest are a long way from home. But there they have established communities, settlements recent enough that it feels like these newly arrived immigrant mexicanos are pioneers, still getting used to the Anglos and to each other. This book looks at the inner lives of Mexican immigrants in a northwestern U.S. boomtown, a loose collection of families from Michoacán and surrounding states living a mere 150 miles from Canada. They are more isolated than most mexicano communities closer to home, and they endure severe winters that make life more difficult still. Neighborhoods form, dissolve, and re-form. Family members who leave may stay in touch, but friends very often simply vanish, leaving only their nicknames behind. Without a market or a plaza, residents meet at weddings, christenings, and funerals—or at the food bank. Philip Garrison has spent most of his life in this region and shares in vivid prose tales of immigrant life, both contemporary and historical, revealing the dual lives of first-generation Mexican immigrants who move smoothly between the Yakima Valley and their homes in Mexico. And with a scholar’s eye he examines figures of speech that reflect mexicano feelings about immigrant life, offering glimpses of adaptation through offhand remarks, family spats, and town gossip. Written with irony but bursting with compassion, Because I Don’t Have Wings features vivid characters, telling anecdotes, and poignant reflections on life, unfolding an immigrant’s world strikingly different from the one we usually read about. Adaptation, persistence, and survival, we learn, are traits that mexicano culture values. We also learn that, over time, mexicano immigrants don’t merely adapt to the culture of el norte, they transform it.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Garrison has taught in Mexico's central highlands and Washington's central valleys, and for the past decade he has helped run a food bank serving Mexican immigrants in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. In telling their stories, he weaves together the centuries-old history of the immigrants' origins in Michoacan, their cultural and religious customs, and their struggle to keep these traditions alive. Garrison relates horrific tales of border crossings gone badly, but what he really wants to convey is the often hidden feelings of his friends who live a five-day drive away from their homeland. Some sleep in shifts in two--bedroom trailers, some under tarps, but they always reassure newcomers that "yes, you really do get accustomed to life here." What keeps them going, Garrison believes, is el pinche mexicano, a state of mind that means one is simultaneously cursed and blessed. With trips home all but impossible due to border tightening after 9/11, this is really the only community these workers can count on. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"he weaves together the centuries-old history of the immigrants' origins in Michoacan, their cultural and religious customs, and their struggle to keep these traditions alive." —Booklist “A rich mass of imaginative impressions in subtly researched pieces, stylistically polished, candid, and authentic in perspective.” —Tucson Weekly ”This book is strong and bold . . . and undeniably strange. The details of lives played out in the shadows are surreal, sometimes haunting, often deeply moving. It’s an eye-opener that all Americans should read.” —Luis Urrea, author of Nobody’s Son “No one has written with greater insight and honesty about Mexican immigration than Philip Garrison. In this important book, he locates the turbulent interface of Hispanic and mainstream American cultures, and dwells there, alert, observant, empathic.” —John Witte, editor of Northwest Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: University of Arizona Press; First Edition edition (April 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816525250
• ISBN-13: 978-0816525256
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,140,494 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Born in the Midwest, not more than a few miles upriver from Hannibal, MO, Philip Garrison has lived and taught in the Pacific Northwest since 1967. He has taken degrees from the University of Missouri and the University of Iowa. His diverse academic interests range from hillbillies to Homer to Cervantes to contemporary Chicano Literature. While teaching at Central Washington University, Garrison divided his time between the main campus in Ellensburg, WA, and branch campuses in Mexico, at Guadalajara, Jalisco and Morelia, Michoacán. Recently, his book Because I Don't Have Wings was translated into Spanish and published by the Cultural Secretariat of Michoacán. Now semi-retired, he currently directs the APOYO food and clothing bank, which he founded in 1995, with several members of the mexicano community.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, March 13, 2007

By 

Lila Harper (Ellensburg, WA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Because I Don't Have Wings: Stories of Mexican Immigrant Life (Paperback)

This one is the real deal. Philip Garrison is not talking about idealized images of a people. He is talking to the people who are moving from one culture to another and trying to make sense of it all. And Garrison is trying to make sense of their worldview. If you really want to get beyond the trite slogans about migrant labor, read this book.