Переведи.
As the description reveals, the novel reverses the South to North immigration path, showing that migrations are multidirectional. In California, a great flow of people (many of whom are young adolescents) cross to Mexico in search of ‘an experience’. Alegria narrates the story of Sofi Mendoza, a young Chicana, who crosses to Rosarito on a partying ‘rite of passage’ with a group of friends without her parents’ permission. On her way back home, she is stopped at the border and is not allowed back into the United States, as she finds out she is not legally a US citizen, which renders her ‘nationless, identityless’. This episode turns the adolescent’s rite of passage into a journey of self-awareness and awakening of understanding of her ethnicity, social status, family origins, etc. The experience changes Sofi’s conception of Mexico and the United States. The vicissitudes she experiences serve as the moral of the novel, which aims at raising consciousness among young Chicanos/as and Latinos/as (and other readers) of the causes of immigration, reclaiming Chicanos’ complex cultural heritage, and making young adults aware of the real implications of the ‘American Dream’. In Sofi’s ‘nightmare’, she discovers “poverty, physical danger in the crossing and immigration laws” (Cummins, 2013: 63). In this sense, I find it interesting to observe the strategies the novel uses to make the young readers empathize with a reality they reject, and learn about the border and Mexico from a the standpoint of the Other, the marginalized, which in this case, is Mexico. For this, I will point out the ways the girl experiences and depicts Mexico, the United States, and the border as a physical line and as a state of mind. For the first time in her easy life, Sofi is conscious of the notion of ‘illegality’ and marginality, and of her identity. The novel opens up with a journey South, from the United States to Mexico, a primarily frivolous act but one that breaks the notion that describes the United States–Mexico border movement as unidirectional, from the South to the North. Following scholar Neil Campbell’s idea of the construction of the North American West and its borders as a rhizomatic process, where diverse movements from East to West, North to South, and vice versa occurred (2008), the novel depicts the United States–Mexico border as a bidirectional bridge. People, goods, and ideas cross from one side to the other and nurture both sides, creating a rich, hybrid space. The young protagonist’s evolution into conceiving herself as a hybrid being reinforces the idea of the need that both parts of this supposedly irreconcilable space, the border, have of the other. Since “statescraft” (Autcher, 2013), or the need of the other for the creation of the notion of the state, is dual (Mexico and the United States base the definition and construction of this “statehood” on the existence of the border and its symbolic meaning), Sofi Amaia Ibarraran-Bigalondo understands the importance of her heritage (Mexican) and her everyday reality (American) for the completion of her identity.
