The bulk of my time along the US-Mexico border last month was spent doing research for my Walls book. However, I also managed to collect material for a few stories I am writing for Up!, the in-flight magazine of Westjet Airlines. This is much lighter fare than my walls work, but after a month among […]
Yearly Archives: 2010
A publisher for ‘Walls’!
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
I’ve known this for a few months now, but this morning I finally signed the contracts and can now make the ‘official’ announcement: In the Shadow of the Walls – my book-in-progress about my travels along walls, fences and barriers around the world – will be published in Canada by Goose Lane Editions. Goose Lane […]
December
06
“Memento Mirmy” is online
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
My profile on ‘rogue taxidermist’ Mirmy Winn is now online on The Walrus Magazine‘s website. Mirmy is the Vancouver artist I met in the fall who creates compelling work with, among other things, unloved mounted weasels and human bones. I will never forget the smell of the human skull she let me hold. The story […]
“Fatherhood” is online
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
My story about becoming a father, which I’ve mentioned ad nauseam on this blog, is now online in its entirety. Find it here.
December
03
Wall of Sadness
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
This afternoon I will leave America’s southern borderlands and cross the northern frontier into Canada. I am going home. My month here in southern California and Mexico has been rich in terms of research for my walls book. I haven’t done any new writing for this project in months now – I needed to gather […]
December
02
To the Migrants’ Shrine
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Christianity is thick on the borderlands, and I’ve spent much of my time here among people of faith. Jesuits ran the Comedor de los Migrantes in Nogales. All three of Tucson’s migration activist groups – Humane Borders, The Samaritans, and No More Deaths – originated out of faith-based groups. Mark Adams, a Presbyterian Minister, runs […]
My Mexican Grandfather
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Yesterday morning I traveled across the border to Nogales, Sonora to visit the Comedor de los Migrantes, a Jesuit-run cafeteria that serves meals to recently deported migrants. At least a third of the migrants who lined up for a breakfast of pozole soup and tortillas had been captured my US Border Patrol agents and deported […]
November
26
The Tohono O’odham and the Wall
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
Two days ago I traveled into the Sonoran Desert and the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation. The landscape reminded me of my time in the Sahara, especially in the refugee camps of the Saharawi. In both deserts, the dwelling places are simple one-story structures occupied by people named for the desert itself: both Saharawi and O’odham […]
November
17
Sounding the Wall
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
“Bach played in cathedrals,” musician Glenn Weyant told me. “The Sonoran Desert is my cathedral.” And Weyant’s instrument is the border wall. I traveled to Nogales with Weyant and watched him attach a contact microphone to the border wall. He plugged the mic into an amplifier and the wall sings before it is even played. […]
November
11
The Fence at Friendship Park
posted by Marcello Di Cintio
The Wall doesn’t end as much as it diminishes. Here, on the white sand between San Diego and Tijuana, the recycled Gulf War landing mats that form the border fence give way to a row of posts that lean like drunks in the surf. America and Mexico begin and end here, but the ocean doesn’t […]
Elsewhere 