The Guardians

Unlike many previous reviewers of The Guardians, I did not find the use of Spanish words and phrases in this book distracting or over-done. On the contrary, I think it added to the flavor of the story and helped identify and characterize the people. And, no, I don't speak Spanish; I do, however, live in the Southwest so either I pick up more than I realize, or I decide that each and every word isn't as important as the overall story.

I enjoyed this book and thought that it gave some important background and insight into the trials of one set of immigrants coming to the U.S. from Mexico. Since immigration has become such a national issue, and particularly here in the West, I think there's value for many people in reading this and other show more stories like it. Was this the greatest story/novel ever? No. But it was far from the worst and I spent a pleasant couple of evenings in the company of Tia Regina, Gabo and especially El Abuelito. show less

A former border control agent recently spoke of giving up the job he loved, and reluctantly deciding to return to the east when his wife adamantly asserted that the Mexican-American border was not a fit place to raise their children. While most of America distracts itself from the wars overseas with celebrity shenanigans, real people are fighting a war of everyday survival on the Mexican border in Ana Castillo’s The Guardians. The most shocking real life border incidents seldom receive more than a fleeting acknowledgement by the press. Castillo’s characters are good people trying to raise their children decently, protect their neighbors and do the right thing in spite of horrific obstacles. The perils of gangs, two-legged coyotes, show more bad or non-existent healthcare, drug and people smuggling, and a historically poor economy fueled by crime presents constant survival challenges to the locals. Castillo’s novel is filled with lives intertwined by blood and chance, where there is hope in the worst and an unending struggle for the souls of the best. show less

After reading The Guardians, I will remember most Ana Castillo's haunting stories about the people living and dying in the borderlands between the U.S. and Mexico. I will wonder why we haven't heard these stories before, I will wonder if they are representative of what is really happening there, and if we will hear more about them.

I mostly appreciated the use of Spanish throughout the character's voices. Sometimes I understood, other times I didn't, but it didn't take away from the story or my enjoyment of it for me. I can imagine these characters actually speaking in this hybrid of the two languages.

i expected to like this novel. The cover blurbs are great and the themes are urgent. Unfortunately, the novel itself veers between long stretches of dreadful plotlessness, highly improbable events that (finally) drive the plot forward, and seemingly endless pages filled with characters' musings to themselves.

It's not as if Ana Castillo's topics aren't engaging. She's telling a story about a family living on and fractured by the Mexican-American border. The characters include a man who vanished crossing the border with coyotes to rejoin his sister and son in the U.S. Years before, coyotes separated him from his wife, harvested her organs, and left her lying dead in the desert. The man's surviving son dreams of becoming a priest and show more finding his father as he navigates a gang-infested school. His guardian aunt, a teacher's aide, dreams of starting a business and relaxes by working in her garden. The aunt has body issues and is still a virgin since she did not consummate her marriage the day before her husband was sent overseas and killed in the military.

Castillo's didacticism is pronounced and inescapable. Characters constantly provide the details of their pasts and their reactions to current events in long monologues. Two of the main characters are schoolteachers and one of the teachers mourns how little the young people know about their own past. And so, the readers receive Castillo's history lessons and opinions about Mexican-American politics throughout the book.

The author's politics are equally unavoidable. Characters muse that we are brothers and sisters on both sides of the border and there should be no restrictions on people traveling north for economic reasons. Castillo's characters never consider the effect that the influx of low-wage, low-skill workers has on the job market and the wages and opportunities of Americans who are also trying to make a living working minimum wage jobs. She bolsters her opinions by having God himself provide a miraculous vision to two of her characters. Heavy-handed to say the least.

All in all, Castillo submits her readers to a tendentious session of proselytizing that often feels like a diatribe. One wishes the author was better able to make the truly pressing border issues come alive for her readers. show less

The Guardians is a moving, suspenseful and engaging novel about family, justice and injustice. It's the story of Regina, a widow and de facto parent of Gabo, a spiritual but troubled teen aged boy whose father, Regina's brother, has disappeared crossing the border from Mexico to America. Regina determines to help Gabo learn what happened to his father and into the mix falls Miguel, a divorced activist attracted to Regina and his tart-tongued grandfather Milton. The characters come from varied circumstances and have different agendas but they all believe in family and in helping each other, and they all want what's best for Gabo, something that he himself does not understand. In the end lies tragedy with a glimmer of hope for the future. show more The narrative mixes varied perspectives and shows how individuals' lives are affected by the larger sweep of history, the desperate things they will do to survive and how little things change for an underclass pushed past the margins. show less

The Guardians revolves around Regina, a middle-aged woman who immigrated from Mexico to New Mexico as a young woman, and now works as a teacher's aide in a small town where she lives with her nephew Gabriel. Gabriel’s father, Rafael, and Regina both want Gabriel raised in the US so he can get a good education and go on to college, but the devoutly religious teenager has his heart set on joining the priesthood.

Rafael still lives in Mexico but frequently crosses the border illegally to find work in the US. As the novel begins he has disappeared during his most recent crossing into the US. Rafael’s wife was killed during a border crossing years earlier, and Regina and Gabriel fear the same has happened to him. Regina asks Miguel, a show more teacher at the school where she works, for help in tracking down the coyotes Rafael hired to smuggle him over the border and in finding her brother.

The Guardians begins by alternating between Regina's viewpoint with Gabriel's letters to God, adding the perspectives of Miguel and his grandfather Milton when they enter the story. The characters' individual voices all ring true, and the different perspectives give the reader a fuller picture of social context, and personalize the larger issues - the mutual need of Mexican citizens for work and of American employers for cheap labour, and laws controlling this exchange. Despite some of the terrible things that happen in The Guardians, it is not hopeless, but pervaded by faith – in the case of Regina and Gabriel, faith in God, and in the case of Rafael, Miguel and Milton, faith in political action and the possibility of social change.

The Guardians illuminates the suffering and lawlessness that results from governmental decisions to make people illegal and deprive them of their basic rights. But by staying focused on the small family story it engages the reader in the fate of characters who stay with you after the book ends. show less

I don't think I've ever read a novel that captures the slow, excruciating sense of the approaching inevitable the way that The Guardians does. Even if you're not one who readily gives their heart to a story or its well-drawn inhabitants, Ana Castillo will capture you, and she will break your heart.