Border literature anthology too much but not enough.
Michael Sedano
Tom Miller. Writing on the Edge. A Borderlands Reader. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003.
ISBN 978-0-8165-2241-5
Tom Miller adds to his storied borderland accomplishments with an exhaustingly comprehensive anthology that covers the US-Mexico 
borderland from TJ to Tamaulipas, from New York City to Modesto Califas, with extended visits to Juarez/El Paso.
Readers already familiar with Miller's wonderful collection of his own travel writing, Revenge of the Saguaro, know he's a writer with a yen for research and a pen with a funnybone. Miller's eye takes in the obvious, like Rosa's cantina or black velvet painting that any eye sees, then digs deeply to share penetrating insight knit into a fascinating fabric of hitherto unknown facts. Put down the completed Miller and you've filled gaps you didn't know existed.
Miller's and the University of Arizona Press' 2003 publication, Writing on the Edge A Borderlands Reader, offers the same kind of experience. Clearly a product of keen research, Miller shares snippets about la frontera from poets, novelists, historians, and memoirists, gente like José Vasconcelos, Grahame Greene, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Maya Angelou, Sam Shepard, Elena Poniatowska, Demetria MartÃnez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, William Carlos Williams, and on and on and on, with eighty-one writers (plus two anonymous pieces) filling out a fabulous table of contents.
And there's the rub, the problem--if there's any--with this collection. Miller packs in so much good work between the covers of the 360 page volume, there's simply not enough meat--other than poems, which inherently come in compact wholes--to dig into. Writing on the Edge is like standing at the best buffet spread you've ever seen but served by one of those new-fangled minimalist chefs who think a lettuce leaf with a dab of sauce and an anchovy rib is a stomach-stretching salad.
Ni modo. There's no time limit to reading Writing on the Edge so you can savor each sample at its own pace, then come back for a second helping and never grow sated. Of course, you'll want more. Miller's added a key resource as the final 27 pages: author bios as well as a conventional alphabetized listing of original sources. Another grand resource comes via the internet, Miller's PDF literary map of the contents, allowing a reader to see on a map where along the border a piece lies, with a sidebar listing the authors and titles by place, and on a second screen, a UofA Press bibliography to extend the breadth of one's post-anthology reading.
Although Miller divides the collection into eight segments, each having its own ideational unity, I see the collection
Miller's and the University of Arizona Press' 2003 publication, Writing on the Edge A Borderlands Reader, offers the same kind of experience. Clearly a product of keen research, Miller shares snippets about la frontera from poets, novelists, historians, and memoirists, gente like José Vasconcelos, Grahame Greene, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Maya Angelou, Sam Shepard, Elena Poniatowska, Demetria MartÃnez, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, William Carlos Williams, and on and on and on, with eighty-one writers (plus two anonymous pieces) filling out a fabulous table of contents.
And there's the rub, the problem--if there's any--with this collection. Miller packs in so much good work between the covers of the 360 page volume, there's simply not enough meat--other than poems, which inherently come in compact wholes--to dig into. Writing on the Edge is like standing at the best buffet spread you've ever seen but served by one of those new-fangled minimalist chefs who think a lettuce leaf with a dab of sauce and an anchovy rib is a stomach-stretching salad.
Ni modo. There's no time limit to reading Writing on the Edge so you can savor each sample at its own pace, then come back for a second helping and never grow sated. Of course, you'll want more. Miller's added a key resource as the final 27 pages: author bios as well as a conventional alphabetized listing of original sources. Another grand resource comes via the internet, Miller's PDF literary map of the contents, allowing a reader to see on a map where along the border a piece lies, with a sidebar listing the authors and titles by place, and on a second screen, a UofA Press bibliography to extend the breadth of one's post-anthology reading.
Although Miller divides the collection into eight segments, each having its own ideational unity, I see the collection
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