After a decade of chasing stories around the globe, intrepid travel
writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest followed the magnetic pull
home--only to discover that her native South Texas had been
radically transformed in her absence. Ravaged by drug wars and
barricaded by an eighteen-foot steel wall, her ancestral land had
become the nation's foremost crossing ground for undocumented
workers, many of whom perished along the way. The frequency of
these tragedies seemed like a terrible coincidence, before Elizondo
Griest moved to the New York / Canada borderlands. Once she began
to meet Mohawks from the Akwesasne Nation, however, she recognized
striking parallels to life on the southern border. Having lost
their land through devious treaties, their mother tongues at
English-only schools, and their traditional occupations through
capitalist ventures, Tejanos and Mohawks alike struggle under the
legacy of colonialism. Toxic industries surround their
neighborhoods while the U.S. Border Patrol militarizes them.
Combating these forces are legions of artists and activists devoted
to preserving their indigenous cultures. Complex belief systems,
meanwhile, conjure miracles. In
All the Agents and Saints,
Elizondo Griest weaves seven years of stories into a meditation on
the existential impact of international borderlines by illuminating
the spaces in between and the people who live there.