Transborder Lives: Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon. LYNN STEPHEN: Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Abstract

"To understand multisitedcommunities," Lynn Stephen writes (p. 66), "we have to offer multisitedhistories." In this comprehensive and multifaceted book, Stephen has shown ushow deeply a single skilled ethnographer with the benefit of decades ofexperience and eight years of sustained work can render understandablemultisited communities. Using the term "transborder" as a welcome conceptualshift away from the worn term "transnational," Stephen profiles indigenousOaxacans whose lives cross not only national boundaries but also the boundariesof class, ethnicity, and gender as they migrate within Mexico and between Mexicoand the United States.