Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir [2018, PDF/EPUB, ENG]

by Jean Guerrero

(120 ratings)
Book cover
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • A daughter’s quest to understand her charismatic and troubled father, an immigrant who crosses borders both real and illusory—between sanity and madness, science and spirituality, life and death

PEN America Literary Award Winner • “The kind of memoir that seems to redefine the genre.”—
Los Angeles Review of Books

From renowned journalist Jean Guerrero, here is the haunting story of a daughter’s mission to save her father from his demons and to save herself from destruction. Marco Antonio was raised in Mexico, then migrated to California, where he met Jean’s mother, Jeannette, a Puerto Rican woman just out of med school. Marco is a self-taught genius at building things—including mythologies about himself and the hidden forces that drive us. When he goes on the run, Jean follows and embarks on an investigative journey between cultures and languages, the earthly and the mystical, truth and fiction. 

A distinctive memoir about the search for an elusive parent,
Crux is both a riveting adventure story and a profoundly original exploration of the mysteries of our world, our most intimate relationships, and ourselves.

“[Guerrero] writes poetically about borders as a metaphor for the boundary of identity between father and daughter and the porous connective tissues that bind them.”—
The National Book Review.
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Book details


  • Author : Jean Guerrero
  • Publisher : One World; NO-VALUE edition
  • Published : 07-16-2018
  • Language : English
  • Pages : 352
  • ISBN-10 : 0399592393
  • ISBN-13 : 978-0399592393
  • Reader Reviews : 120 (4.3)

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  • File Formats : PDF, FB2, DOC, EPUB, TXT
  • Status : available for FREE download
  • Downloads : 3548

About the Author


Jean Guerrero


Jean Guerrero is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda. Her first book, Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir, won a PEN Literary Award. Her writing is featured in The Best American Essays 2019. She is an Emmy-winning investigative reporter, contributing to NPR and the PBS NewsHour. She started her career at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires as a foreign correspondent in Mexico.

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Reader Reviews

J
knabstrupperfan
Wonderful, interesting and a page turner
Reviewed in France on 03-20-2020
Wonderful book. The writing is precise and emotional, you forget there’s someone telling you this compelling story and get into the events, that’s how amazing the writing is. The story is based on real events and yet it all is so surprising..
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J
Jennifer
A fascinating border story
Reviewed in the United States on 01-14-2023
I was completely engrossed by this book from the beginning. I'm familiar with many of the locations and even, sort of, situations and it all rang true. Heartfelt..
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J
Harriet H. Carter
Elegant, riveting, and heartfelt memoir by an Emmy-award-winning journalist on cross border issues
Reviewed in the United States on 08-08-2018
I have long admired KPBS Fronteras Reporter, Jean Guerrero, who recently won two Emmys for her local reporting on the border wall. Last summer I heard her read an excerpt from her soon-to-be-published memoir at a KPBS-sponsored panel discussion led by NPR's Michel Martin. Juxtaposed to her quiet speaking voice was an elegant poetic style that was powerfully raw and gripping. So I anxiously awaited the publication of this memoir, and the wait was well worth it. This book not only recounts her own experience growing up the relatively privileged product of two immigrant parents who couldn't be more different from each other, but it also provides a glimpse into the mind of a first-generation American living alongside a border that is very much in the news with almost daily obsessive tweets by you-know-who about 'building the wall.' After journalism school, she takes a job with The Wall Street Journal in Mexico City so she can explore the country and discover the bits and pieces of her father's genealogical heritage in an attempt to get to the bottom of and try to understand her fractured and hurtful relationship with this extremely creative but troubled man, who is branded as a schizophrenic here but as a shaman there. More important, this memoir becomes a metaphoric journey of the coming-of-age hero leaving the mundane world behind, going through trials and tribulations, conquering fear, and returning with a life-enhancing wisdom. As Joseph Campbell famously noted: 'The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spot and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands---and the two are atoned.' But if metaphysics and mysticism aren't your cup of tea, then I highly recommend this book anyway as a masterful and colorful description of Mexico, its history, its people, and its culture. After reading the Kindle edition, I went back to Amazon and ordered a hardcover copy, because this is truly a book for my permanent library that I will want to read over and over again in the years to come..
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