What is the best meaning of Mexican-American?

books:

	• Child Of Many Rivers: Journeys To And From The Rio Grande Lucy Fischer-West Texas Tech University Press, 2005 - 190 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Mexican American Memoir grows up

It is such a pleasure to read a Mexican American memoir that does not stop simply at the cusp of adulthood or at the edge of the barrio. The author's love for El Paso and Juarez shines through these pages, which are rich in detail and dedicated to demonstrating how people cope with, manage and accept "difference" on a daily basis; Child of Many Rivers made me think how such books are sorely needed in this age of conflict and suspicion across borders and cultures.

A Journey Worth Taking

Lucy Fischer-West's memoir, Child of Many Rivers, recounts the story of people whose lives predate the author's, Fischer-West's own herstory, and the story of life that will outlive hers (by way of her son and those whose lives have intersected with hers). In this story, Fischer-West introduces us to her father and mother, one with roots in Germany, the other in Juarez, Mexico, respectively; she describes their meeting, their courtship, and eventual marriage, quite unorthodox, considering the two are very much set in their ways, being older like they are. They move from one place to another, the author using rivers, both literal and metaphorical, to document the course of their lives. Fischer-West weaves in her own life from early on to very recent, and that of her son's. As much as a book of this length and nature can be, it is pure poetry.

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Watching the River Flow in Lives

Child of Many Rivers: Journeys to and from the Rio Grande. By Lucy Fischer-West, Foreword by Denise Chavez . Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2005. xvi, 190 pages. 32 b/w photos, index. ISBN 0896725561.

This Child won the 2005 Southwest Book Award and was a 2006 WILLA Literary Award Finalist. Lucy Fischer-West teaches English at El Paso's Cathedral High School, and her students are lucky that she does. You are lucky if you read the volume. It started with contributions on her father and mother to the Texas Folklore Society. In the "Epilogue" she summarizes that "Rivers for me are a continuum, linking not only each other but also past and present and most importantly all the people who belong to them and have touched my life."
Her father was a German sailor, her mother was the "youngest and most beautiful girl in a family of twelve" in Camargo, Chihuahua. As young girl, Lucy patted tortilla balls beside the Conchos River, and as a mature woman she washed her hands in the Ganges and received a blessing from Sister Teresa. Her autobiographical essays lure the reader through the gifts of cultures. Whether she's sharing the aroma of the El Paso market, the horrible auto accident near the River Clyde, French rocks with Paulette, touring India and Nepal on the Rotary trip "to improve international understanding," Lucy's waters mingle in a beautiful human stream. Un millon de gracias, Lucy.