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Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado
Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado (1993) is the first children's book written by Mexican American/ Chicana scholar Gloria E. Anzaldúa and illustrated by Consuelo Méndez Castillo. Loosely based on Anzaldúa's early life in South Texas, Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado tells the story of a young Chicana girl, Prietita, living near the US-Mexican border who befriends and helps a young Mexican boy, Joaquín, who has recently immigrated.

A book of the Latino Children's Literature genre, one book review says: "...this is an important book for libraries in border states as it touches on timely and sensitive issues." Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado is a bilingual book. Written in both English and Chicano Spanish which is spoken by many Mexican American people, the book Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado is a cultural representation of life on the border and immigration issues.

In Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado, Anzaldúa has tackled several issues which to some may be controversial. In portraying the poverty that Joaquín and his mother experience, Anzaldúa shows a painful and often ignored issue. In creating the protagonist of the book as a courageous, strong, young Latina girl, Anzaldúa challenges the dominant stereotypes often imposed on Latinas as a result of the colonial/modern gender system. In one section of the book, Prietita takes a stand against some other children who are bullying Joaquían because he is different. Author Francis Ann Day writes of Prietita's character: "By Prietita's example, the reader learns how to resist peer pressure and take a stand against prejudice and cruelty." In the end of the book, Prietita is invited to apprentice with the local herbalist plays an important role in Mexican American communities and in the book.

Context
In the 1990s there was a increase in bilingual books for children and young adults. While this trend began with the translation of stories written in English, there was an increase in bilingual children's books that "deal with young people's questions about living in two cultures simultaneously and the process of developing a personal identity in that situation. Taran C.Johnston included Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado in a article they wrote on transculturation in bilingual children's literature as form of resistance literature. In publishing bilingual children's books that combine two cultures in a process of transculturation and telling the stories of marginalized groups, these books may be seen as resistance to the dominant culture. According to Taran C.Johnston, "...children's stories are frequently the channel through which an imperial power exerts its cultural influence."

Opening Pages
The title page illustration portrays a barren yard outside a small shack in the desert where laundry hangs to dry on a line and animals roam with no fence.

The next page is beautifully illustrated with a desert scene with plants and animals. The text, written in English on one page and Spanish on the facing page, is an introduction by Anzaldúa.
 * In English it reads: "I grew up in South Texas, close to the Rio Grande river which is the Mexican-U.S. border. When I was a young girl, I saw many women and children who had crossed to this side to get work because there was none in Mexico. Many of them got wet while crossing the river, so some people on this side who didn't like them called them 'wetbacks' or 'mojados.' This is the story of Prietita, a brave young Mexican American girl, and her new friend Joaquin, a Mexican boy from the other side of the river." -Gloria Anzaldúa



The Story Unfolds
Prietita is playing in her yard when Joaquín walks by selling firewood. The two begin to talk and she notices that the Spanish he speaks is different from what she speaks. She asks if he is from the other side of the river. She also notices that his clothes are dirty and worn and he has sores on his arms. She thinks about bringing him to the curandera, an herbalist who heals people. Joaquín gets embarrassed that she has seen his sores and hurries away.

Soon Prietita hears boys yelling and she goes to see what is happening. She encountered her cousin and his friends yelling at Joaquín and calling him racist names. An interesting note on the illustrations is that the shirt of Prietita's Chicano cousin has the word "pocho" which means "Americanized" written on his back.

Prietita feels angry and torn between her cousin who she has know her whole life and his cruel actions. However, when she sees one of the boys about to throw a rock at Joaquín, she runs in front of Joaquín and tells the other boys to leave.

Joaquín is very grateful to Prietita and she walks him home to his shack where she meets his mother. They share their story of crossing the border in search of work and finding the same problems on this side. Prietita offers to ask her neighbor if they have any work to offer. She leaves and asks Joaquín to visit her the following day.

Joaquín comes to visit and the two become friends. Prietita gives her leftover lunch to him and plans take him to the curandera when he is less shy.

One day when he is visiting, a neighbor calls out that the Border Patrol is in the area. Joaquín and Prietita race to his shack to alert his mother. Then together the three of them run to the herb woman's house, after prietita has the idea she may be able to help.

Once at the herb woman's house, Joaquín and his mother hide under the herb woman's bed she instructed them to do. Prietita and the herb woman watch as the Border Patrol vans cruises through the area and eventually leaves without stopping at the house.

After the border patrolmen had left, they sat together and drank tea while they recovered from the fright. The herb woman invites Prietita to gather herbs from her garden and offers to teach her how to prepare them to heal Joaquín's sores. The herb woman invites Prietita to become her apprentice.

About the Author: Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa
As a young Chicana growing up in South Texas, Gloria E. Anzaldúa suffered discrimination because her family was poor and Mexican. Living near the Rio Grande which is the US-Mexico border where she saw many women and children who had crossed the border to search for work. These experiences in Anzaldúa's childhood influenced the writing of this story and inspired by her desire to tell the often silenced tale of life in the borderlands.

"She imprinted her heroine, Prietita, as a 'bridge'- a way of transforming the world. For Anzaldúa, writing books for children was an important step of activism because children would effect necessary cultural and social transformations."

Gloria E. Anzaldúa is well known for her semi-autobiographical book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza in which she vividly describes the effects of the border on every aspect of mestizo life: social, emotional, psychological, etc. In Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado, Anzaldúa attempts to make her experience and knowlegde in Chicano theory accessible to children.

Anzaldúa later moved to Santa Cruz, California where she worked as a professor at University of California Santa Cruz. She was a scholar of Chicano cultural theory, feminist theory, and queer theory. She passed away on May 15, 2004 due to complications with diabetes.

About the Illustrator: Consuelo Méndez Castillo
Consuelo Méndez Castillo is an artistfrom Caracas, Venezuela. She spent a large part of her early life in South Texas and later moved to San Francisco to study art. She was one of the original three women in the Bay Area muralist team, Mujeres Muralistas, who painted several murals that depicted aspects of Latino life, injustices, and social issues and was part of the artistic movement Mission muralismo. She is a widely exhibited artist in Latin America and she has done illustrations for children's books including: Friends from the Other Side/ Amigos del Otro Lado; & Atariba and Niguayona: A Story from the Taino People of Puerto Rico (Tales of the Americas). She returned to South Texas to do research for the illustrations of this book.