¶ … 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...

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.…