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Book Review by Manuel Ramos

Crossing Borders: Personal Essays
Sergio Troncoso
Arte Público Press - September, 2011

Although the noted sportswriter Red Smith got it wrong about Muhammad Ali, he was right on when he said that writing is easy: "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Ernest Hemingway put it this way: "I have to write to be happy, whether I get paid for it or not. But it is a hell of a disease to be born with. I like to do it. Which is even worse. That makes it from a disease to a vice."

Sergio Troncoso, author of the acclaimed The Last Tortilla and Other Stories (winner of the Premio Aztlán), The Nature of Truth, and his most recent novel, This Wicked Patch of Dust, embodies both Smith's and Hemingway's brutal yet romantic views of the writer. Want proof? Pick up a copy of Crossing Borders: Personal Essays, Troncoso's latest.

We live in a complex time. Troncoso is a complicated man trying to understand a complicated world. In his quest for understanding, he eloquently shares lessons learned in sixteen provocative essays.

Troncoso delivers on the promise of the title of his book. These very personal essays cross several borders: cultural, historical, and self-imposed.

For example, he contemplates writer's block in A Day Without Ideas and compares it to a death-like existence where nothing matters and he will "simply be there."

In a painful letter to his sons detailing their mother's struggle with breast cancer, Troncoso the writer reveals his true identity as Troncoso the frightened, caring, and strong father.

He takes on the 9/11 attackers (Terror and Humanity) not with hatred or revenge but with a plea for basic humanity. "To be human is to engage with, to care about. To be human is to love another. To be human is to communicate with someone, even if you are only shouting at them. The most human of all is discourse. With nature. With other human beings."

He writes, with some anxiety and plenty of honesty (Fresh Challah), about major contradictions he has embraced – he is a Chicano from El Paso, educated at Harvard, attracted to Judaism, and now living the intellectual life in New York. The careful reader picks up on Troncoso

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