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My Two Border Towns cover
RAISE THE FUTURE

My Two Border Towns

by David Bowles

The border as home, not crisis.

For you if

you're raising a kid in a world that makes the border sound like a problem.

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$19 MSRP · Hardcover
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Every Saturday, Elder and his father cross the bridge from Texas into Mexico — stopping at the market, eating lunch, picking up supplies. It's ordinary life, transnational life, the way millions of families actually live. But on the bridge there are also families waiting — refugees hoping to be heard, kids who have nothing. Elder's dad stops to give what they can, and Elder watches and learns without a lecture. Bowles doesn't present the border as crisis or wall or threat; he presents it as home — a place of abundance and joy and complicated reality all at once. It's the counter-narrative every kid in a border community deserves, and the one every kid outside one needs.

Where This Book Lives

Setting
Mexico • North America
Voice
Written by a Mexican author
Themes
belongingborderlands
Topics
u.s.-mexico border crisis

Bowles drew this from his own childhood — crossing with his dad, the Saturday rituals, the mercado, the bridge. The refugee families on the bridge aren't a lesson; they're part of the landscape that Elder is already learning to see and respond to. The book code-switches between English and Spanish the way Bowles's community actually talks, and that's not decorative — it's the whole argument. This is what the border actually sounds like.

Related Viewing

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