Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration / by Alejandra Oliva

Astra House, 2024. Trade pb. VG. 

In this powerful and deeply felt memoir of translation, storytelling, and borders, Alejandra Oliva, a Mexican American translator and immigrant justice activist, offers a powerful chronical of her experience interpreting at the US-Mexico border.

In Rivermouth, Oliva focuses on the physical spaces that make up different phases of immigration, looking at how language and opportunity move through each of them: from the river as the waterway that separates the US and Mexico, to the table as the place over which Oliva prepares asylum seekers for their Credible Fear Interviews, and finally, to the wall as the behemoth imposition that runs along America’s southernmost border.

With lush prose and perceptive insight, Oliva encourages readers to approach the painful questions that this crisis poses with equal parts critique and compassion. By which metrics are we measuring who “deserves” American citizenship? What is the point of humanitarian systems that distribute aid conditionally? What do we owe to our most disenfranchised?