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How the West Was Juan: Reimagining the U.S. / Mexico Border
How the West Was Juan creatively approaches the current political stalemate over restrictive v. compassionate border policy by imagining a different U.S.-Mexico border, one that returns to the early 1800s U.S.-Mexico border. Relocating the border serves the dual purpose of disconnecting the heated immigration debate from the current physical border, and allowing exploration of the physical and cultural space of the U.S. Southwest, where most U.S. Mexicans reside today as they always have.
Imagine the United States losing the 1846 war, ending up a federation of 44 states [bordering] Alto México (with an acute accent over the “e”), one of the world's major economies, Spanglish its lingua franca. Its borders? As abstruse as the ones defeating us today. If you think this is a Leibnitzian universe (or perhaps one of Kellyanne Conway's alternative facts), read Steven W. Bender's prescient How the West Was Juan. It might show us the way out of this perverse prison we call “reality.”
Ilan Stavans, author of Laughing Conversations on Humor and The Novel and the World
A Pandora's box is opened in the hands of a master of law and cultural studies as well as history. Playful, yet historically and legally researched, How the West Was Juan demarcates a new territory for the physical, psychological, moral, and spiritual borders of our country, as well as deconstructing the inaccuracy of our traditional history books. Bender keeps us entertained with his kneading of geographical facts with history and current events, allowing us to envision different, possible borderlands, and throwing a scholarly wrench into the notion of border and belonging, as well as appropriated spaces.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, author of Word New Perspectives on Canícula and Other Works by Norma Elia Cantú
Imagine the United States losing the 1846 war, ending up a federation of 44 states [bordering] Alto México (with an acute accent over the “e”), one of the world's major economies, Spanglish its lingua franca. Its borders? As abstruse as the ones defeating us today. If you think this is a Leibnitzian universe (or perhaps one of Kellyanne Conway's alternative facts), read Steven W. Bender's prescient How the West Was Juan. It might show us the way out of this perverse prison we call “reality.”
Ilan Stavans, author of Laughing Conversations on Humor and The Novel and the World
A Pandora's box is opened in the hands of a master of law and cultural studies as well as history. Playful, yet historically and legally researched, How the West Was Juan demarcates a new territory for the physical, psychological, moral, and spiritual borders of our country, as well as deconstructing the inaccuracy of our traditional history books. Bender keeps us entertained with his kneading of geographical facts with history and current events, allowing us to envision different, possible borderlands, and throwing a scholarly wrench into the notion of border and belonging, as well as appropriated spaces.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, author of Word New Perspectives on Canícula and Other Works by Norma Elia Cantú
182 pages, Paperback
Published July 24, 2017
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