Jillian in the Borderlands

by Beth Alvarado

Jillian Guzmán, who is nine years old at the beginning of the book, communicates through drawings rather than speech as she travels with her mother, Angie O’Malley, throughout the borderlands of Arizona and northwestern Mexico. Later she creates survival maps for border crossers and paints murals at the Casa de los Olvidados, a refuge in Sonora run by the traditional healer Juana of God.

These fabulist and darkly funny tales, focusing on Mexican-American, Euro-American, and Mexican characters, feature visionary experiences, ghosts, faith healers, a deer’s head that speaks, a dog who channels spirits of the dead—and a young woman whose drawings begin to create realities instead of just reflecting them.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

163 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2020

Reviews

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

We dreamed communally in those days and, in a mysterious way, were apprised of the news before it ever hit the papers or airwaves or even the internet. We knew about the seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died of dehydration in the custody of the Border Patrol, for instance. We dreamed of her spirit haunting the desert and of her mother's spirit searching for her. La Llorona took on a new meaning for us: all over Mexico and Central America, they were crying, the mothers, for their children. And, yes, we heard that the girl had been sick when the Border Patrol found her, but we also knew that they had waited eight hours before giving her medical care. We hoped, then, that the ghosts would rise in vengeance. Really. We hoped that. We dreamed it. And we, the Demented Elderly, we were not a vengeful people, but there was being borne in us a hatred not only for those who hated but also for the heartless and even for the merely indifferent.

Alvarado takes some very real fears - deportation and children put in dog kennels - and blends them with mysticism in her stories of a mute girl, and her life near the border. Her tale is told through a series of interconnected short stories. I enjoyed the anecdotes, though I was never completely sure who was narrating the story. I'm also wondering if the tale mightn't have been more powerful if written in a more conventional novel format . . .

Nevertheless, the writing is powerful, and the story is compelling. Jillian's adventures will stick with you.

[Simón · Rating 5 out of 5]

This dazzling book required that I be continually re-oriented. Looking back at the first chapter, I notice how it moves from focusing on the desert almost as a character to Jillian's mother, and eventually, to Jillian herself. At first it was disorienting, until I was able to relax into trusting the narrative to move through time and perspective differently, remembering how much I crave longform work that is not plotted according to a western arc.

The titular borderlands consist of the expected -- the militarized border between the US and Mexico in the desert where Jillian volunteers to rescue people dying from exposure. When Jillian is younger, the borderlands also seem to be between the living and the dead, gifting her with the ability to commune with spirits. But I was also thinking about moral boundaries, racialized borders, unspoken rules of propriety about family/sexuality/caretaking. And always beneath, of course, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera as the foundation of queer chicana theory.

I found myself pulled through the suspense of what would happen next then slowing down and savoring the exquisite language. One of my favorite elements was the serious (unironic?) treatment of religion, spirit, worship, and sainthood. The syncretic religion, combining imagery and experiences of spirit from Catholicism and indigenous sources, gave the story a glow. I lapped it up.

The central story sneaks up on you. I thought that it began around when they meet Juana of God, but again, I was content with the episodic, tangential, poetic chapters, too.

I’ll definitely come back to this moving, delicate, womanist, tender world. One of my favorite things was how Jillian processed her emotions and thoughts through drawing, so drawing in a way was in the borderlands of communication, as she refused to speak words.

I can't recommend this book enough.

[Sarah Stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beth Alvarado's brilliant "cycle of rather dark tales" is one of the most inspiring books I've read in a long time. It's marvelously constructed, moving from voice to voice with the chapter titles and descriptions to serve as guides ("The Dead Child Bride: In which Jillian encounters the dead child bride and is thus saved from the clutches of her neighbor, Mr. Wiley" or "End of Days: In which Jillian flees la migra with Marisol, encounters the ghost girls, and foresees the end of days.") and in the way the voice is both poetic and highly readable. The characters are wonderful, vivid, and memorable. The book is not only a cycle of tales but also a gripping, multi-voiced novel, a story of all kinds of familial and romantic loves and disappointments. It's also a ghost story and very much a story of injustice and resilience. It has left me with so much hope! I keep recommending it to everyone I know. And I recommend it to you, too, dear fellow readers. It's about miracles, among other things, and is itself a kind of miracle.

[SmallPressPicks · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this imaginative collection of linked stories, “the borderlands” seem to refer not only to the territory along the U.S.-Mexico border--a landscape traversed by the central character, Jillian Guzmán, and her family--but also to metaphysical boundaries that are magically porous to Jillian: between life and death and between the material and spiritual worlds. Collectively, her experiences in these dimensions create a portrait of deep empathy, and of the powers of hope and redemption, even amid suffering.

For my review of the book, see https://smallpresspicks.com/jillian-i....

[Sarah Cavar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins tiny, speechless, and intentional. It ends big, speechless, and intentionally-polyvocal, with Jillian’s freewheeling & neuroqueer narrative passing into the voices of a pair of tiny twins, a mother, a collection of elders with dementia, and more.

I have never read a collection-novel (because this book truly is both at once) quite like this — the closest to them are Claire Oshetsky’s works, which I also adore. Jillian in the Borderlands takes on disability & Madness subtly to explore class, race, and migration explicitly, allowing for a politicized speculation that remains whimsical *and* deadly serious in both form and content. I’m deeply impressed by the use of interconnected yet separable short stories and a huge variety of points of view to effectively map out several concentric worlds: Jillian, her family, her womb, her community, her embattled and embittered countries.

I’ll be returning to this one again and again not only as a fabulously fun and thought-provoking narrative(s), but as a masterclass in political AND fabulist AND irreverent AND immensely smart storytelling.

[Liz Heichelbech · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a beach read, though it is an escape, of a kind. Are you brave enough to seek pilgrimage? If so, let these aptly-titled lines wash over you until you fully enter into this magical reality. This author is a weaver of words and worlds. She straddles the real and the supernatural, the cultural myths of privileged America and the dimensions of spirit embodied in the Hispanic diaspora. It took me some pages to surrender to this alternate way of experiencing language and plot -- perhaps I knew that my heart was going to be broken open and I resisted -- but once I did, I became immersed in the lives of these characters. I had to know what would happen to mute Jillian who can see beyond the veil, and who communicates through drawings. I had to find out what would become of the curandera, Juana of God, and her spirit-channeling chihuahua. Alvarado uses irresistible characters to keep you from looking away from the underlying sorrow of migrants, of desert-crossers, of the deported, of the poor and their poisoned and polluted neighborhoods, of the "others" to whom the US "justice" system has deemed illegal to provide humanitarian aid. But this is not a book whose agenda is overt protest. The cruelty and evil that capitalist culture wreaks upon some of our most vulnerable is voiced in a lyrical, layered, and at times, even wryly humorous artistry. Alvarado dances in the in-between place, using the power of paradox and irony to keep us reading and wake us up. Her characters, though oppressed and possessed of supernatural abilities, impress us with their strength and humanity. A courageous and powerful and utterly original book.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved loved loved! Harsh and beautiful and compassionate...

[R. Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's no way to explain this -- just go read it! One of my new favorite books.

[Finley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received his book through a giveaway hosted on GoodReads.

No one can deny that life is complicated in the United States right now. For Jillian Guzman, however, the rough political climate is only the tip of the iceberg. At the moment Jillian was born, she was shown the universe, which caused her to grow up mute, as she did not see the purpose in speaking. She was also given the lifelong ability to see spirits and glimpses of the future, which she communicates (with varying levels of success) to the people around her through her art. Through a series of short stories, Jillian in the Borderlands tells about Jillian’s time growing up as a mixed race child in the US living with her mother near the US-Mexican border. Part supernatural urban fantasy, part social commentary on race relations in the country, this novel is one which is difficult to place into a single definitive genre, but it is one which you will not regret reading.

From the moment I began reading this short novel, I had a hard time putting it down. Alvarado’s writing style is unique, and her characters are rich in personality, making for an engulfing reading experience. Every story connects well, but at the same time could easily stand alone with minimal change. Provided, the fact one chapter (usually the second, if I recall) among the mostly third-person narrative is told instead in first person by one of the characters, and that who the narrator is can usually only by figured out through context clues, takes a bit of getting use to, and can often be a bit confusing the first few times. Otherwise, though, the story is like a modern work of art, painting a vivid picture of our time through its words. I felt myself deeply invested in Jillian’s adventures (and misadventures), as if I was listening to a friend tell an exciting story about their childhood, rather than reading about a fictional young woman.

It’s plain to see, I highly recommend this book. It is both entertaining and thought-provoking, and will definitely leave you thinking about the state of our world, particularly if you are living in the US and witnessing the racial tensions, and at times violence, that many people have towards those they view as “other”. Due to some of the topics covered, this is not likely a book for classroom discussion, but it could easily be used to start a dialogue between an open-minded parent and their teen child. It is definitely a book that anyone feeling nervous about the current direction that politics is going should give it a read.

[Kamilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

The style of writing here is really unique, I enjoyed it. Definitely need to have some Spanish basics down to understand everything. Kind of like the language is on the borderlands of English and Spanish. There is a lot of magical realism/mysticism, some of which drew me in more than others. I think that towards the end the religious overtones started to turn me off the story, but otherwise it was very enjoyable to read about.

The main character is a girl who is born mute but can see elements of the past and future - ghosts, premonitions, etc. She spends most of her time drawing pictures that most people find disturbing from her memories of historic tragedies. She grows up a pretty dysfunctional family who ends up living on the dangerous fringes of American society, and eventually crosses the border into Mexico seeking help for a maimed aunt.

My main problem with this story is the point of view - it's constantly switching between the characters. For a longer novel this would probably work splendidly, but for something that only about 150 pages it left me feeling like I couldn't really connect to any of them, including the main character, Jillian. Some of them didn't seem to serve much of a purpose besides describing yet another personality affected by south-north migration. There is a lot of emphasis on the kids in cages horror stories featured in the news right now, and about the wall, which makes me wonder how this book will age.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is really good. I love the fabulist elements, but that ends up coming second to the people in the story. It’s strong all around though, definitely worth checking out.

[Jan Underwood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief magical realist novel that addresses the current horrors at our southern border, as well as the strong imaginations and loving bonds of various colorful characters.

[Ian Baaske · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, to me, is a masterpiece. It may not be everybody's speed but it's mine. On a scale of 1 to 10, the writing quality is an 11. And the story is beautiful and relevant and timeless at the same time.

[Sarah E · Rating 3 out of 5]

I attempted to read it for a year, and then, I finally gave up. There’s something about the way it’s organized which caused me to continually get lost. Maybe it was just over my head

[Jennifer Bradshaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, magical, powerful, and visionary.