¶ … Devil's highway' was a stance of standing back and looking at my prejudices. Luis Alberto Urrea reduced this mass of numbers to individuals. All the time, we are faced with the problem of immigrants in the news -- the issue of foreigners entering the U.S. has always been a problem, and I think during hard times (such as the current recession) this problem becomes aggravated and more sensitive due to local resources being that much more limited and valuable. The issue is, too, that we are ego-centrist (the center of our universe) and, after that, depending on experience, can relate closest to our similar group that we identify with. Anything outside that ken may seem alien to us and threatening. The closer an entity is to us, the more real and heartfelt their sufferings; the more different they are to us -- with alien ideology, cultural practices, beliefs, opinions, way of life etc. -- the more distant and the less we fail to relate to them.

My initial reaction to the 'Devil's...

People die all the time. These people are unrelated to me. At the same time, aware of these emotions I criticized them; nonetheless, they were there.
Reading the book, however, and tracing the individual histories of each of these lives made me enter the lives and perspectives of the other, and, seeing them as more human, made me dread the inevitable fate that would occur to them. They had given their all for the chance of starting a new life. Here was courage! I knew their end, and, empathizing with the individual, found it hard to continue reading about his ordeals until that end would be reached.

The above was my spontaneous reaction. The concept map, on the other hand, helped me divide these thoughts into groups -- to categorize them so that my ideas would be presented in a clear and…