La Frontera is Full of Stories
Both Sides: An Anthology of Border Noir edited by Gabino Iglesias
Editor: Gabino Iglesias
Gabino Iglesias is the author of Coyote Songs, Zero Saints, and Gutmouth. He is the book reviews editor at PANK Magazine, the TV/film editor at Entropy Magazine, and a columnist for LitReactor and CLASH Media. His nonfiction has appeared in places like The New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the L.A. Times, El Nuevo Día, and other venues. His reviews are published in venues like NPR, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Criminal Element, The Rumpus, Heavy Feather Review, Atticus Review, Entropy, HorrorTalk, Necessary Fiction, Crimespree, and more. He teaches at SNHU's MFA program.
Featuring: Daniel A. Olivas, Cynthia Pelayo, Johnny Shaw, Rios de la Luz, Alex Segura, Rob Hart, Nicolás Obregón, J. Todd Scott, Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason, Nick Mamatas, Isaac Kirkman, Shannon Kirk, David Bowles, Nicolás Obregón, Sandra Jackson-Opoku, and Christopher David Rosales
Released on April 7, 2020 by Polis Books, Both Sides: An Anthology of Border Noir has been hailed as a landmark anthology, and a much-needed response to current U.S. politics, embedded racism, and flat, stereotypical border-story books like American Dirt.
Both Sides opens with a brief introduction by editor Gabino Iglesias calling the book, “a tool that will help do one of the most significant things contemporary American fiction can do: rehumanizing la frontera” (8). It’s an anthology about borders, sure, but more, he says, it’s about “the people on both sides of—and across—those borders” (9). And he wastes no time in getting us straight to those stories; at only three pages long, Iglesias’ succinct, heartwarming, and politically acute introduction, jumps right into “The Letters” by Rios de la Luz.
It’s a smart opening piece. Clocking in at a swift 11-pages, de la Luz offers a hypnotic, magical introduction to an anthology which will roam restlessly between genres as if as frustrated by the limitations of genre as any other kind of confinement. Almost as if to prep us for entry, to enchant readers into the anthology’s wide-ranging narratives of revenge, horror, crime, resilience, and lore, de la Luz lulls us with simple, elegant language. “The Letters” interweaves a woman’s witchcraft into the fabric of ICE and family separation. The story follows brief, fragmented threads of three male figures while inexplicable occurrences unfold alongside memories to form a kind of map, interlocked fates, action and reaction in equal measure. It’s an unsettling read, playing the dreaminess of her prose off the nightmares her characters live through—the kind of energetic poles which characterize Both Sides as a whole.
The stories that follow are alternately contemporary, near-past, and not-so-speculative near-future stories. Many, like Daniel A. Olivas’ “Los Otros Coyotes”—in which children flee the tyrannical U.S. in Underground Railroad-style escape to reunite with deported families, spliced with the tenderness of Rogelio’s youthful sincerity—simmer with political rage and satire. His, and others, make no bones about blatantly skewering American politics and politicians; they are fast-paced stories of heroes we love and hope for, and villains we—you know how it goes—love to hate.
Others, including Cynthia Pelayo’s “The Lament of the Vejigante” rally in the name of resilience to honor family heritage threatened, when not entirely wiped out, by white American assimilation and learned shame. Others still embrace less politically stark, more emotionally compromised stories.
It’s not that we don’t know who, or what side, we’re rooting for in stories like Nicolás Obregón’s “Colibrí”, for example, but that the monolithic, identifiable face of the villain is removed. We’re left with all the pain, with nothing and no one concrete, immediate, to direct it at.
“Fat Tuesday” by Christopher David Rosales does a particularly good job of this in an emotionally evocative piece set between the university halls of Tijuana and the streets of Los Angeles. Here, Rosales shows us gang violence, crime, and revenge, yes. But more, he poignantly renders the heartache of a man caught between worlds. Ruben, helpless to protect his son or save his marriage, is from L.A. but has built a successful life across the border. For him, paying a return visit “home” only heightens Ruben’s sense of unmoored alienation. It’s an understated, moving story, navigating plot momentum and emotional resonance with subtlety and ease. Consistent with the anthology’s thematic underpinnings, “Fat Tuesday” poignantly reminds us that “home” often feels out-of-reach, even when geographically within our grasp.
Following, we get pieces like David Bowles’ “El Sombrerón” which similarly refutes straightforward moral lessons when the story’s eponymous ancient goblin threatens and tempts the story’s women. Sandra Jackson-Opoku’s lively, voice-driven “Trouble” highlights family tensions, featuring the detective work of our ex-convict narrator and his Afro-Latina cousins. At a whopping 50-pages, it’s easily the longest in the anthology, but the dynamic relationships, humor, and engaging voice keep the story energized throughout.
The anthology concludes with Alex Segura’s “90 Miles”. A quick, quiet, and hard-hitting final note, the story centers on a young family crossing by water from Cuba, a rocky marriage straining toward salvation, and a final note on the power of hope, or its loss.
Collectively, these stories are alternately cool and removed, or fundamentally familial and familiar, though all devoted to inescapable interdependence; we are bound to each other. Actions always reverberate out. On the one hand, we see harsh and violent relationships laid bare before us—between family and friends, cartel lords and those working for them, U.S. legal tyranny and im/migrant individuals and communities. On the other hand, these stories scaffold around family trees and survival hierarchies; they start, branch, halt, pick up parallel threads, double back. Take Johnny Shaw’s Fundido. It’s close third-person narration beginning from the cartel driver Gordo’s point of view before leapfrogging to the man known as El Fundido, then alternating sections from young man Suso Rivas’ perspective. While not a formally “experimental” anthology, a number of included pieces fracture or segment structurally and/or chronologically, plunging readers into another kind of boundary negotiation.
This very interplay between trauma and isolation, and family or communal connection, is the lifeblood of Both Sides. However these fifteen stories diverge in tone, genre, or focus, they all throw human networks and inhuman cruelty into stark relief.
Refreshing
Spanish lines and dialogue which don’t cater to English-only readers. Keep up, because these stories won’t wait around for you.
Favorites
“The Letters”—Rios de la Luz
“Colibri”—Nicolás Obregón
“Fat Tuesday”—Christopher David Rosales
“Trouble”—Sandra Jackson-Opoku
Surprises
Just how much horror this crime noir anthology packs in. Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason haven’t been dubbed the “Sisters of Slaughter” for nothing.
Mackenzie Suess is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Online, Sundog Lit, Typehouse Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She has been awarded grants and fellowships to write, teach, and present her work globally. She teaches writing workshops and serves as managing editor of TIMBER.
Issue 10.2