Tunnel Kids - Softcover

Lawrence J. Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816519269 ISBN 13: 9780816519262

Publisher: The University of Arizona Press, 2001

Synopsis

Winner of the Southwest Book Award!

Beneath the streets of the U.S.-Mexico border, children are coming of age. They have come from all over Mexico to find shelter and adventure in the drainage tunnels that connect the twin cities of Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. This book opens up the world of the tunnel kids and tells how in this murky underworld of struggling immigrants, drug dealers, and thieves, these kids have carved out a place of their own. Two parallel tunnels— each fourteen feet wide and several miles long— drain the summer rains from Mexico to the United States. Here and in the crumbling colonias you'll meet the tunnel kids: streetwise El Boston, a six-year veteran of the tunnels; his little pal Jesús; Jesús' girlfriend, La Flor, and her six-month-old baby; wild Negra; poetic Guanatos; moody Romel and his beautiful girlfriend, La Fanta. They form an extended family of some two dozen young people who live hard-edged lives and answer to no one in El Barrio Libre— the free barrio.

Lawrence Taylor and Maeve Hickey met these kids at Mi Nueva Casa, the safe house built to draw the youths out of the tunnels and into a more normal life. The authors spent two summers with tunnel kids as they roamed all over Nogales and beyond in their struggle to survive. In the course of their adventures the kids described their lives, talking about what might tempt them to leave the tunnels— and what kept them there. Hickey's stunning portraits provide a heart-stopping counterpoint to Taylor's incisive prose. Story and photos together open a window into the life of the tunnel kids—a world like that of many homeless children, precarious and adaptive, albeit unique to the border. Where most people might see just another gang of doped-up, violent children, Taylor and Hickey discover displaced and sometimes heroic young people whose stories add a human dimension to the world of the U.S.-Mexico border.

About this title

About the Author:

Maeve Hickey is an artist and photographer whose multimedia work has been exhibited in England, Italy, France, Ireland, and Mexico as well as parts of the United States

From Booklist:

Taylor and Hickey spent two summers in the underworld of Mexican youths who work and live in the mile-long parallel drainage tunnels connecting Mexico and the U.S. at Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. The tunnels drain the water of summer rains but also accommodate a flow of illegal immigrants and the illegal activities associated with that enterprise. In the filth of the tunnels, homeless Mexican youths, many of whom have been abandoned by their parents, are exposed to a seamy, violent world of drug dealers, thieves, and other criminals. Among the tunnel's streetwise denizens are six-year veteran El Boston, 17; Flor, 15, and her six-month-old baby; heavily made-up, pregnant La Halloween; mercurial Negra; and moody Romel. Taylor and Hickey reveal the poverty and uncertainty of these teens' lives and the fragility of their relationships and their futures. Their circumstances express the sharp, heartbreaking contrast between U.S prosperity and Mexican poverty, which continues despite increasing signs of enterprise and economic growth. Vanessa Bush
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About this edition

• Publisher: The University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0816519269
• ISBN 13: 9780816519262
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 148