Along the Border Lies by Paul S. Flores

¶ … Along the Border Lies

Borders can mean many things, not the least of which are the borders of a page, a country, or any indeterminate edge. The title of the book Along the Border Lies, by Paul Flores illustrates this indeterminate nature of what a 'border' is, in the indeterminate characters of its main protagonists and its symbolically indeterminate geographical status of where lie the borders of the American 'nation.' Even the narrative structure of the novel is transgressive, as it takes the form interlocking stories about people in their twenties and thirties and their relationships, rather than the traditional linear form of plot, conflict, and resolution, as outlined by Janet Burroway in her guide to Writing Fiction. But Flores does make use of extensive geographic and linguistic symbolism, as is also discussed by Burroway, for symbolism are powerful tools in the hand of any author. The personal relations of the protagonists in the novel are given added political heft and weight by the close presence of the California and Mexican border between San Diego and Tijuana.

Thus, the border is not merely symbolic, although it has symbolic status. Illegal immigrants traverse the border, and are shipped across the border for white profit. But the book also suggests that the supposedly inviolate and legal nature of 'borders,' national and personal, as the title indicates, is also a lie. The idea of division and ethnic, national, and racial identities are constructs, suggests the author, not illustrated by the fact that so many of the protagonists traverse the borders between nations and ethnic groups with such ease, but also the falseness of the borders characters put up between one another and within themselves.

For instance, in one scene where Miranda, a woman with a shady past from Tijuana, and Edgar, a painter from San Diego, have a fight, Edgar feels indeterminate in terms of his ethnic identity, his status as an artist, and particularly his masculinity. Miranda has been beaten but Edgar can only think of himself and what this says about himself. In his own words, he feels like a weak link, "crushed by reality into numb inconsequence. The ineffectual self-indulgent artist. Artists, in the end, did not change the course of events, but merely reported the news of their happening, at best in a new way," in other words, they lie on the border of human definition, always observing, never participating in real life.

His sister had gathered that from some Marxist critic and read it to Edgar while she was still in college, thinking about becoming a writer." His sister was indeterminate in her sexual identity as a lesbian, much as Edgar feels a lack of his own masculinity, given his supposedly feminized profession, and that he "was neither socialist" in his politics and emotionally "took everything so personally," rather than politically, as his sister wished him to. Even Miranda expects him to do nothing about her brutalization, although Edgar feels he should be able to react violently to his girlfriend's beating, as a real man should.