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A review by peachpapaya94
Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
2.5
It may be my own fault for having such high hopes, but I was continuously disappointed by this book. Even the parts I thought were good and interesting and important were disappointing because they were so short and either never picked up again, or only returned to after a hundred pages, during which I’d already forgotten about them.
I feel like this book should’ve been four much shorter books - one on translation, one on stories from people crossing the U.S. border or fighting against the U.S. immigration system, one on faith and one on the authors relationship to these things. Mixing them together, in my opinion, drowned the interesting things the author had to say on these topics in the confusing, rambling nature in which they were placed together. It just didn’t “weave” together for me, at least not most of the time, which was a shame. Her experiences with translating immigration forms and being at the border are really interesting, but she did not do enough research (again, in my opinion) on the theories she brings up regarding immigration, belonging, identity politics etc. Anzaldua gets such a brief mention I wonder if she was just name-dropped as a formality. There are so many brilliant theorists working on immigration theory and related topics, but the confusing and shifting focus didn’t allow any space for them. This points to another problem, which was the intended audience. I think it’s safe to say that the people who are going to pick up this book are already interested in immigration justice and are somewhat progressive. Yet, the author was sometimes almost condescending in her assumptions of what the reader didn’t know, or even couldn’t, know. Given the relatively superficial analysis she provides, I don’t think this sort of assumption was warranted. It really made me question who she thought she was writing to.
This brings me to the writing itself, which was probably the most frustrating part of this reading experience. I think I understand why other reviewers have said the writing is “beautiful” and “lyrical” - the author uses poetic turns of phrase and a lot of nice imagery to make her points. However, the book needed another strict copy edit. There are so many strange sentence structures and awkward phrases that I was taken out of the story by the quality of the writing on almost every page. This sounds harsh, but it did ruin the book for me - this is probably not on the author, but on her editors.
The most beautiful part of this book were the stories from the border. She did a great job at creating an image of the border crossing in Tijuana, and respectfully relaying the stories of people she met there.
I feel like this book should’ve been four much shorter books - one on translation, one on stories from people crossing the U.S. border or fighting against the U.S. immigration system, one on faith and one on the authors relationship to these things. Mixing them together, in my opinion, drowned the interesting things the author had to say on these topics in the confusing, rambling nature in which they were placed together. It just didn’t “weave” together for me, at least not most of the time, which was a shame. Her experiences with translating immigration forms and being at the border are really interesting, but she did not do enough research (again, in my opinion) on the theories she brings up regarding immigration, belonging, identity politics etc. Anzaldua gets such a brief mention I wonder if she was just name-dropped as a formality. There are so many brilliant theorists working on immigration theory and related topics, but the confusing and shifting focus didn’t allow any space for them. This points to another problem, which was the intended audience. I think it’s safe to say that the people who are going to pick up this book are already interested in immigration justice and are somewhat progressive. Yet, the author was sometimes almost condescending in her assumptions of what the reader didn’t know, or even couldn’t, know. Given the relatively superficial analysis she provides, I don’t think this sort of assumption was warranted. It really made me question who she thought she was writing to.
This brings me to the writing itself, which was probably the most frustrating part of this reading experience. I think I understand why other reviewers have said the writing is “beautiful” and “lyrical” - the author uses poetic turns of phrase and a lot of nice imagery to make her points. However, the book needed another strict copy edit. There are so many strange sentence structures and awkward phrases that I was taken out of the story by the quality of the writing on almost every page. This sounds harsh, but it did ruin the book for me - this is probably not on the author, but on her editors.
The most beautiful part of this book were the stories from the border. She did a great job at creating an image of the border crossing in Tijuana, and respectfully relaying the stories of people she met there.