Product Description

The award-winning author of Across the Wire delves into the post-NAFTA and Proposition 187 border purgatory of garbage pickers and dump dwellers in By the Lake of Sleeping Children. In 16 indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States--and ignored by both. 10 photos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #259507 in Books
• Published on: 1996-09-01
• Released on: 1996-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

Amazon.com Review
This novelistic portrait of Tijuana garbage pickers and dump dwellers is variously funny, sad and startling. Americans who think that they have encountered real poverty in the south Bronx will be in for a shock when they read this book. And yet this is not a story of desperation. Urrea (born of a Mexican father and an American mother) does not ask pity for his subjects. Neither does he repeat childish political slogans about inequality (except to make them sound silly). Rather, he reveals the fascinating lives of resourceful Mexicans living along the border.

From Publishers Weekly
Urrea has an almost evangelical zeal to communicate the sad lot of Mexico's "untouchable class," a border population abandoned by their country, at times by their own kin. This collection of repportage, like his Across the Wire, originates in Urrea's years helping California missionaries deliver food and medicine to orphanages and inhabitants of a moldering garbage dump near Tijuana. Here, people's lives are wholly delimited by this universe of decomposing waste. They mine their livelihood in hidden treasures?a can of food, cast-off clothing, scrap wood for a house. Passions fester and erupt; nobility and sacrifice coexist with greed, cruelty and rage. A dual government of armed toughs and community respect prevails. In 10 stark, intimate, riveting essays, Urrea passes no judgment, but attempts to show why his subjects risk all for the chance of something better across the border. Their privation provokes incomprehensible acts, incomprehensible unless one has been in their situation. Urrea has shared their lives and he emerges with strong opinions on those responsible for such misery, and fears of what it forebodes for the course of America's future. Well worth reading in our age of escalating xenophobia.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Chilling look at the other side.
We, as United States citizens take for granted all that we have and this book is a solemn reminder of all that we do have to be thankful for. Urrea gives character sketches of sorts on the impoverished families and orphaned children that live unseen by the world in their own world of the Mexican garbage dumps. A very sad tale about the suffering in Mexico that goes unnoticed. Thank you Urrea for opening my eyes and my heart to these children.

A must read
I just finished By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border, and I would recommend it to anyone who has a heart and open eyes.

First, for the person who had a negative review of the book (2 stars), this is not "non-fiction" in the sense that you're used to. No where does the author state all he's writing is dry facts. He's a creative writer, and you can write creatively based on fact. It happens all the time. And why should the author be so PC by changing "gringos" to "American(o)s"? "Gringos" is to imply anglos, not Americans.

Anyway, this book is definitely not for the faint of heart because at times is can be graphic in detail. I told my husband about some on the stories, the center theme being the dump, and he said, "what? they live in a dump?" He's Mexican. He's never heard of that. And he's heard many things more than the average person. The thing you just need to take away from this book is not the brutality but the knowledge that other people do live in extremely harsh situations. Whether you want to do something about it is another thing, but the most you can do is talk about it. Mexico is not the only country with such extreme poverty, and this book shouldn't be viewed and as only Mexico's truth.

In the harshness, there is still life. The last chapter of the book demonstrates this. Also that people do try to help as much as they can.

This would be a great book to teach in High School, but I doubt it would ever make the reading list.

Shcocking and true
I was scared and upset when I finally realized what the title of the book meant. I am a mexican-american, born on the U.S. side of the border. This book reminded me just how far away America is from Mexico, even though we are neigbors, we are worlds away. This book is blunt. Although it was a harsh reality check for me, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.