Christina L. Sisk's brilliant book treats contemporary migratory movements of Mexicans to the United States as they relate to identity formations inside and outside of national boundaries. Her study comprises an introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion, wherein she explores the world of migrants traveling from different areas of Mexico to the United States. She focuses her analysis on migrant representations in music, literature, and film, arguing that these visual and auditory images relate to nationalist projects as well as to conceptualizations and constructions of Mexican identity or mexicanidad.
Sisk makes use of anthropological and sociological studies in her examination of these artistic genres to assert that cultural production does not arise, or exist, in a vacuum but is situated in historical and social contexts. The author focuses on three basic “producers’ of cultural images as these relate to the migrant in the period encompassing 1990 through 2010: (1) Mexicans from Mexico or Mexican imaginaries, (2) the migrants themselves, and (3) the children of migrants who although born or raised in the United States still look to Mexico for their cultural identity, particularly in times of increased hostility to Mexicans, such as the efforts to build support for anti-immigrant legislation like Proposition 187 (California) and SB 1070 (Arizona).
The central thesis encoded in the title of the book indicates that due to sustained migratory movements, Mexico continues to be a nation in flux. This state of being “in transit” is of course characteristic of all nations due to contemporary globalization processes. However, for Mexico, a poor country neighboring a powerful and wealthy nation, it is doubly significant. Mexico, unlike other nations, has experienced sustained migratory movement from the middle of the nineteenth century until the present twenty-first century.
The author's goal in this excellent study is to capture that elusive movement of people in time and space through Mexican and Mexican American imaginaries. In her theoretically sophisticated introduction, she applies paradigms articulated by Ernesto García Canclini and Arjun Appadurai to develop her own thesis regarding how artistic representations are valid sources for undertaking ethnographic studies. Sisk proceeds to explore films produced in Mexico, and in chapter 1 analyzes El jardín del Edén, (1994), Santitos (1998), and De ida y vuelta (2000). In these three films Mexican cinematographers explore issues of identity formation and national identity via the experiences of migrants who cross the border from Mexico to the United States and back to Mexico again.
A different angle is highlighted in the second chapter where Sisk examines the migratory experience as depicted in literary works of Mexican borderland writers in contrast to Central Mexican ones. Authors analyzed include Rosario Sanmiguel, Eduardo Antonio Parra, and Luis Humberto Crossthwaite. Sisk demonstrates that their works do not promote “Mexican patriotism and national loyalty” as those of earlier authors did (p. 55).
Chapter 3 examines expressions of mexicanidad (or essentializing Mexican characteristics) through rock and roll and themes of migration, while the fourth chapter centers on the experience of an indigenous migrant, a Zapotec from Oaxaca. Sisk underscores how an indigenous perspective offers a radically different experience from those of mestizo migrants. The final chapters, 5 and 6, I found the most interesting, since they center on binational Mexican filmmakers, such as Alejandro González Iñárritu (Babel, 2006), and Mexican American writers such as Sandra Cisneros, who present migration with more nuanced images of migrants. In her conclusion Sisk explores her own subject position as a citizen of the United States born of a Mexican immigrant mother and an Anglo-American father. She perceptively notes how one can be both an American citizen and a cultural citizen of Mexico.
Christina L. Sisk's book offers a splendid incursion into formations and transformations of Mexican and Mexican American identity in response to migratory movements and experiences.
