Borders

One of my all-time favourite short stories is “Borders” by Thomas King. I just discovered that there is a new graphic novel version of the story, which I hope to teach in 2025. (More on this later.) The masterful story offers an accessible analysis of indigenous identity and pride and questions the concept of international borders.

I’m thinking of this story now for two reasons. 1. I am steps from the US-Mexican border and had the opportunity to do a walk by yesterday with a local political science professor. She also took JP and I through the grounds of Fort Brown, where we were spoken to by the Texas National Guard and warned to stay away from the area. The border control agent we talked to a little later explained why. Apparently, migrants may be travelling through the area, and they are sometimes accompanied by drug dealers who use them as a diversion tactic in order to smuggle drugs over the border, so it isn’t safe.

JP’s collegue was skeptical of both of these stories.

“We’re allowed to be here,” she muttered under her breath, in French, so that only JP and I understood. “C’est vraiment faux.”

I was the only one of the three of us who was nervous about what those two men might do to us. We were wandering around in the heat peering at the wall and asking questions. It wasn’t exactly a casual stroll.

Now back to the second reason why “Borders” by Thomas King is on my mind.

2. I have accepted a job teaching in a high school across the provincial border from me. You should know that I was born and raised in the province of Quebec until my family moved to North Bay in 1977. JP only left in 2021 when we bought our current house. Until then, I spent a lot of time crossing the border to be with him.

   Teaching there will feel a little like going home. It should also be worlds away from my last teaching experience in Ottawa, which is, in part, why I took the position. I want to try something entirely different.

I am intrigued by what crossing borders means to our identities, what it allows us to imagine for ourselves and become, and what it means for the communities we align ourselves with.

JP’s colleague is from a small town in Quebec, but she now lives here, considers herself a Texan, and is an American citizen. She is perfectly content in this border town, even as she interrogates the experiences of this place from a political science standpoint.

I am a literary scholar by training and I think that fiction can also investigate and change perspectives by exploring the experiences in an imaginative way. We learn from what we read and it changes us for the better, so long as we engage meaningfully with content that is rich and complex.

American Dirt introduced me to the experience of Mexican migrants, but it is quite controversial because it was written by Jeanine Cummins, a white writer. It became another example of appropriation of voice, mostly because it was considered exploitative. Nonetheless, it made a strong impression on me that has lingered.

The issues that are currently playing out in relation to our North American borders are extremely complicated. I think we’ll need many people to consider them in order to develop reasonable and compassionate solutions to issues that arise out of deeply troubled and tragic circumstances.