On Thursday, September 27, eight members of the book club met to discuss the timely memoir The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from the Border by Francisco Cantú. A former officer at Customs and Border Patrol, Cantú affords readers a look at his experiences at the front lines of American immigration policy enforcement. His reflections, observations, personal history, and anecdotes provide crucial insight but eschew easy answers to the questions we continue to grapple with as a country around our Southern border- what it means, how it looks, and who is allowed to cross. Our group discussed the author’s trajectory and motivation for sharing these snapshots from his life, and his reflections on feeling alternately powerless and adept at a job that caused him such internal discord.
September Bonus meeting: By popular demand, the book club met twice in September. On Thursday, September 20 six members gathered to discuss The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. The group delighted in Wharton’s quick wit, cultural observations, parallels with our modern age. We debated her characters’ agency in the confines of their social circles, and remained divided on the moral compass and gradual downfall of Wharton’s protagonist Lily Bart.