Cantú’s Mother Quotes in The Line Becomes a River
Dragonflies migrate as birds do, she told me, beating their papery wings for days on end across rolling plains, across long mountain chains, across the open sea.
You must understand you are stepping into a system, an institution with little regard for people.
All these years, I told her, it’s like I’ve been circling beneath a giant, my gaze fixed upon its foot resting at the ground. But now, I said, it’s like I’m starting to crane my head upward, like I’m finally seeing the thing that crushes.
For his family and for you, José is unique. Sure there might be thousands or millions of people in his position, but it’s because of him that their situation is no longer abstract to you. You are no longer severed from what it means to send someone back across the border. You know what’s keeping him away, what keeps him from his family. It’s something close to you, something that’s become a part of you.
The part of you that is capable of violence, she said, maybe you wish to be rid of it, to wash yourself of it, but it’s not that easy. […] You weren’t just observing a reality, you were participating in it. You can’t exist within a system for that long without being implicated, without absorbing its poison.
Cantú’s Mother Quotes in The Line Becomes a River
Dragonflies migrate as birds do, she told me, beating their papery wings for days on end across rolling plains, across long mountain chains, across the open sea.
You must understand you are stepping into a system, an institution with little regard for people.
All these years, I told her, it’s like I’ve been circling beneath a giant, my gaze fixed upon its foot resting at the ground. But now, I said, it’s like I’m starting to crane my head upward, like I’m finally seeing the thing that crushes.
For his family and for you, José is unique. Sure there might be thousands or millions of people in his position, but it’s because of him that their situation is no longer abstract to you. You are no longer severed from what it means to send someone back across the border. You know what’s keeping him away, what keeps him from his family. It’s something close to you, something that’s become a part of you.
The part of you that is capable of violence, she said, maybe you wish to be rid of it, to wash yourself of it, but it’s not that easy. […] You weren’t just observing a reality, you were participating in it. You can’t exist within a system for that long without being implicated, without absorbing its poison.
