WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.510 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Sylvia. 00:00:03.510 --> 00:00:06.960 align:middle line:84% Because he is back home, I will be referring to our next 00:00:06.960 --> 00:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% reader, Francisco Cantú, as Paco. 00:00:09.990 --> 00:00:12.720 align:middle line:84% I first met Paco here at the Poetry Center 00:00:12.720 --> 00:00:16.350 align:middle line:84% where he taught the class, "Nonfiction as Reconstruction." 00:00:16.350 --> 00:00:18.270 align:middle line:84% From the very beginning, he struck me 00:00:18.270 --> 00:00:20.560 align:middle line:84% as someone who really listened, who 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:22.950 align:middle line:90% is thoughtful in his response. 00:00:22.950 --> 00:00:24.960 align:middle line:90% He's a noticer. 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:29.790 align:middle line:84% Paco served in the US Border Patrol from 2008 to 2012. 00:00:29.790 --> 00:00:32.700 align:middle line:84% He entered the program with a singular purpose-- 00:00:32.700 --> 00:00:36.540 align:middle line:84% to tell this story of the border, a necessary one, 00:00:36.540 --> 00:00:41.580 align:middle line:84% and because of its necessity, a hard story to tell. 00:00:41.580 --> 00:00:44.550 align:middle line:84% Fenton Johnson, a writer and creative writing professor 00:00:44.550 --> 00:00:48.120 align:middle line:84% here says of Paco, "I see lots of good writing 00:00:48.120 --> 00:00:50.910 align:middle line:90% but Paco has something to say. 00:00:50.910 --> 00:00:54.090 align:middle line:84% His writing is superb, yes, but as much as 00:00:54.090 --> 00:00:56.430 align:middle line:90% that, it is necessary-- 00:00:56.430 --> 00:01:00.590 align:middle line:84% the highest compliment I can offer." 00:01:00.590 --> 00:01:04.310 align:middle line:84% "The Line Becomes A River" provides no easy answers. 00:01:04.310 --> 00:01:07.340 align:middle line:84% Paco's work shows that even as institutions diminish 00:01:07.340 --> 00:01:09.560 align:middle line:84% the humanity of those they police, 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:13.580 align:middle line:84% something must remain to connect with another human, 00:01:13.580 --> 00:01:18.450 align:middle line:84% to show up, to render aid, to care. 00:01:18.450 --> 00:01:21.270 align:middle line:84% It is about people who do the violence mandated 00:01:21.270 --> 00:01:25.350 align:middle line:84% by institutions, about the gradual dissolution of morals 00:01:25.350 --> 00:01:28.480 align:middle line:84% that allows one to commit acts of violence. 00:01:28.480 --> 00:01:31.560 align:middle line:84% It is about war, about moral injury, 00:01:31.560 --> 00:01:35.670 align:middle line:84% about institutional violence, all of which 00:01:35.670 --> 00:01:39.300 align:middle line:84% sit at the heart of American life and imagination 00:01:39.300 --> 00:01:42.780 align:middle line:84% whether one wants to admit it or not. 00:01:42.780 --> 00:01:47.550 align:middle line:84% It's uncomfortable because bureaucracy is a meat grinder, 00:01:47.550 --> 00:01:50.940 align:middle line:84% and no one really wants to see how the sausage gets made. 00:01:50.940 --> 00:01:52.680 align:middle line:90% It's ugly. 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:56.340 align:middle line:84% And Paco doesn't shy away from those brutal truths. 00:01:56.340 --> 00:01:59.520 align:middle line:84% Brutality injures the enforcers as well as 00:01:59.520 --> 00:02:01.500 align:middle line:90% those being enforced. 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:05.420 align:middle line:90% No one emerges unscathed. 00:02:05.420 --> 00:02:10.139 align:middle line:84% One of Paco's mentors, Alison Deming said it very well. 00:02:10.139 --> 00:02:12.290 align:middle line:84% I celebrate the emergence of his voice 00:02:12.290 --> 00:02:14.390 align:middle line:84% as a work for our desert landscape 00:02:14.390 --> 00:02:17.600 align:middle line:84% and the people who are perhaps most intimate with it 00:02:17.600 --> 00:02:19.100 align:middle line:90% in our time. 00:02:19.100 --> 00:02:23.060 align:middle line:84% Those crossing and those policing the crossings. 00:02:23.060 --> 00:02:26.720 align:middle line:84% His work is lyric, documentary, and soulful 00:02:26.720 --> 00:02:29.360 align:middle line:84% in a field where there is enough human trauma 00:02:29.360 --> 00:02:31.040 align:middle line:90% to go around for all. 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:33.770 align:middle line:84% And empathy is the first principle 00:02:33.770 --> 00:02:39.060 align:middle line:84% in understanding where we are, and where we need to go. 00:02:39.060 --> 00:02:42.810 align:middle line:84% The reach of this book during this time cannot be understated 00:02:42.810 --> 00:02:44.730 align:middle line:90% in its importance. 00:02:44.730 --> 00:02:51.390 align:middle line:84% In her debut Amazon.com review, my mother, Debbie Galloway, 00:02:51.390 --> 00:02:54.360 align:middle line:90% wrote, "Heartbreaking. 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:56.670 align:middle line:90% Gave me a lot to think about. 00:02:56.670 --> 00:02:58.830 align:middle line:90% I loved this book." 00:02:58.830 --> 00:03:01.830 align:middle line:84% She convinced her small, West Texas library 00:03:01.830 --> 00:03:06.000 align:middle line:84% to order copies of the book saying to me, 00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:08.340 align:middle line:84% "Maybe the people around here will think twice 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:11.610 align:middle line:90% before building that damn wall." 00:03:11.610 --> 00:03:13.590 align:middle line:84% So much of "The Line Becomes a River" 00:03:13.590 --> 00:03:15.900 align:middle line:84% is about families and communities, 00:03:15.900 --> 00:03:19.380 align:middle line:84% an undocumented man's struggle to keep his family together, 00:03:19.380 --> 00:03:21.750 align:middle line:84% the narrator's relationship with his mother 00:03:21.750 --> 00:03:25.710 align:middle line:84% as his moral center, the complicated camaraderie 00:03:25.710 --> 00:03:26.880 align:middle line:90% of those who serve. 00:03:26.880 --> 00:03:29.780 align:middle line:90% 00:03:29.780 --> 00:03:32.200 align:middle line:84% There's a quote by WG Sebald that I 00:03:32.200 --> 00:03:35.020 align:middle line:84% think Paco would appreciate, and it 00:03:35.020 --> 00:03:38.890 align:middle line:84% goes, "The more images I gathered from the past, 00:03:38.890 --> 00:03:42.340 align:middle line:84% the more unlikely it seemed to me that the past had actually 00:03:42.340 --> 00:03:45.220 align:middle line:84% happened in this way, or that way. 00:03:45.220 --> 00:03:48.130 align:middle line:84% For nothing about it could be called normal. 00:03:48.130 --> 00:03:54.220 align:middle line:84% Most of it was absurd, and if not absurd, then appalling." 00:03:54.220 --> 00:03:57.100 align:middle line:84% This after all is our relationship with history, 00:03:57.100 --> 00:03:59.860 align:middle line:84% and what we are called upon to confront. 00:03:59.860 --> 00:04:02.920 align:middle line:84% Paco bravely takes on this challenge in his book-- 00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:06.670 align:middle line:84% to look the absurd, and the appalling in the face 00:04:06.670 --> 00:04:10.630 align:middle line:84% and see a way to an ethics of care. 00:04:10.630 --> 00:04:13.930 align:middle line:84% With that, please join me in welcoming Paco. 00:04:13.930 --> 00:04:15.780 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE]