Border Book Tour Announcement!

I am thrilled/relieved to announce that–after nearly a decade of road trips, interviews, research, writing marathons, and psychic meltdowns–my fifth book has finally arrived! Called ALL THE AGENTS & SAINTS, it explores the ramifications of having an international borderline split your ancestral land in two, as experienced by Tejanos down south and Akwesasne Mohawks up north. You might recognize the book’s cover girl as the artist Ana Teresa Fernandez, seen here erasing the border wall between San Diego and Tijuana in a piece called “Borando La Frontera.”

 

Next month, I’ll be launching a national book tour, and it would be amazing to see you:

Saturday, July 8, Pine Manor College, BROOKLINE, MA TBA

Sunday, July 9: Politics & Prose, WASHINGTON DC, 5 pm

Tuesday, August 29: FlyLeaf, CHAPEL HILL, NC 7 pm

Labor Day Weekend Decatur Book Festival, DECATUR, GA: TBA

Tuesday, September 5: Brazos, HOUSTON, TX 7 pm

Wednesday, September 6: The Twig, SAN ANTONIO, TX TBA

Thursday, September 7: Texas State University, SAN MARCOS, TX 11 am

Friday, September 8: Book People, AUSTIN, TX 7 pm

Sunday, September 10, Barnes & Noble, CORPUS CHRISTI, TX 2 pm

Tuesday, September 12, Center for Mexican American Studies, TX 4 pm

Tuesday, October 3, Bluestockings, NEW YORK CITY, 7 pm

Thursday & Friday, October 5-6, St. Lawrence University, CANTON, NY TBA

I will be posting more events as they are scheduled on my website. Meanwhile, here is the book’s first *starred* review from Kirkus:

“An exploration of the borderlands that deftly mixes memoir, groundbreaking sociology, deep reporting, and compelling writing. A child of the parched Texas-Mexico border, Elizondo Griest (Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines, 2008, etc.) found herself teaching on a Mohawk Indian reservation that straddled the frigid New York state-Canadian border. At first, the author could not perceive any significant similarities between the two border experiences other than the deep roots of Catholicism. However, as the months passed, she began to realize the commonalities between borderlands shot through with poverty, cruelty by law enforcement agencies, language wars, environmental degradation, poor schools, ill health, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and extraordinarily high death tolls, including suicides. As Elizondo Griest documents the plight of border occupants, she struggles with defining herself within her mixed-race background. She has thought of herself as a mix of Tejana, Chicana, and Latina, but people outside her family usually viewed her as a gringa due to her unusually light skin and blue eyes. But as she began to understand, the borderland existence is the most defining factor of all. Portions of the author’s findings as a reporter are graphic, especially as she chronicles her travels with law enforcement officers to retrieve rotting bodies of Mexicans who died trying to cross rugged territory in Texas or Arizona to establish a life in the U.S. Perhaps the most revelatory portions of the book are the sections about the already existing wall on stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border, barriers predating the rise of Donald Trump. The chapters about the Mohawk struggles are quite likely to seem revelatory, too, given the dearth of national journalism coverage of that region. In this well-conceived book, the author demonstrates unforgettably that national borders constitute much more than lines on a map.”

My sincere gratitude to all of you for your support. This book has been an epic journey, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Love and light, 

Stephanie

Comments

  1. Amy

    Kudos to you for all your hard work, it clearly paid off! That is the best book review ever! Can’t wait to read it!

  2. Cate

    I grew up on the TX/MX border and my father’s family hailed from the MT/CA border. Both experiences shaped us deeply. All this is to say I can’t wait to read your new one and best of luck on the tour. P.S. Come to San Miguel de Allende sometime.

  3. You can call on me to review…will buy, for sure…your new book.

    After I read your”Bloc…” first published book that I bought at the second Texan Hall of Fame dinner,
    , had hoped to see you when I signed
    my first thriller novel last November, in Chapel Hill and three other Carolina bookstores.

    Alas, my companion Louise fell and fractured her hip…two days before Daughter
    Daughter Michaela and I were to fly from Dallas to RDU. So, we missed.

    Now, and during your signings,
    residing ( and researching historical novel ) in northern Indiana town of Knox.
    Will not return to Texas until October. Good show on your signings. If you want my comments
    for those occasions, ready to read and send. Dick Elam

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