

“What we take from granted in the United States as being Mexican, to those from southern Mexico, is almost completely foreign. Rural Mexicans don't have the spare money to drown their food in melted cheese. They don't smother their food in mounds of sour cream. Who would pay for it? They have never seen "nachos." In some regions of the south, they eat soup with bananas; some tribal folks not far from Veracruz eat termite tacos; turkey, when there are turkeys, is not filled with "stuffing"―but with dry pineapples, papaya, pecans. Meat is killed behind the house, or it is bought, dripping and flyblown, off a wooden plank in the village market. They eat cheeks, ears, feet, tails, lips, fried blood, intestines filled with curdled milk. Southerners grew up eating corn tortillas, and they never varied in their diet. You find them eating food the Aztecs once ate. Flour tortillas, burritos, chimichangas―it's foreign food to them, invented on the border.
They were alliens before they ever crossed the line.”
― The Devil's Highway: A True Story
They were alliens before they ever crossed the line.”
― The Devil's Highway: A True Story

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
― Klara and the Sun
― Klara and the Sun

“Henry,' he [Ellwood] said, smoke tumbling out of his mouth in tendrils, 'are you all right?'
'I'm fine.'
'Yes, I know you're fine. But are you all right?”
― In Memoriam
'I'm fine.'
'Yes, I know you're fine. But are you all right?”
― In Memoriam

“If only Mexico paid their workers a decent wage.”
― The Devil's Highway: A True Story
― The Devil's Highway: A True Story

“Ellwood smiled, and a sudden, dry bleakness spread over Gaunt’s heart as he thought of Hercules, and Hector, and all the heroes in myth who found happiness briefly, only for it not to be the end of the story.”
― In Memoriam
― In Memoriam
Andrea’s 2024 Year in Books
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