A Mexican Maze Without Borders

Paperback - 209 pages

Praise for Marc Zimmerman and his Illusions of Memory autofiction books:
“A wonderful writer.” Luis Alberto Urrea, author ofInto the Beautiful North.“An incredible opus.” Dick Goldberg, author of Family Business. “Keenly sensitive to ethno-communal borders." Roberto Márquez, author of A World among these Islands. “Nothing like it in contemporary American fiction.” John Beverley, author of Against Literature. “A writer with so many stories to tell.” Carolina Rivera Escamilla, Salvadoran author of …after. “Zimmerman … offers us wonderful, imaginative and truthful stories.” Marta E. Sánchez, author of Contemporary Chicana Poetry. “Some of the best stories fiction can provide.” Antonio Zavala, author of Pale Yellow Moon.

From the Borderlands to Minneapolis, from Mexico City to Chicago, Houston, and other points north and south, this book tells stories of Marc Zimmerman’s vulnerable, at times reckless and feckless protagonist Mel, toward the end and in the aftermath of his second marriage as he encounters Mexicans, Chicanos and others—women, men, LGBTQ people—who enrich his knowledge of Mexican worlds that are ultimately parts of an amazing borderless maze—a labyrinth “sin fronteras.”

Two Chicano writers who come and go, a Chicano convict and maybe mafioso who has to go, five or six Minnesota Marías, a French-Mexican/Jewish mis-alliance, predatory trips through Baja, Sinaloa, Chihuahua, Jalisco and Acapulco, a Mexico City love affair throttled by personal weakness and economic collapse, his many ways to lose mexicanas and chicanas, plus a Mexican Molly Bloomish transgender woman who goes from whoring, drinking and drugging to the brink of blissful, monogamous and motorcycling marriage—all this and much more in a book capped off by a "night of the dead in a Michoacán cemetery. So goes a collection marking out the maze encountered in this added installment of Zimmerman’s auto-fiction series.

Best known for his works on Central American, Mexican and U.S. Latino themes, Marc Zimmerman has written and edited over forty books. His Illusions of Memory series includes The Short of it All, The Italian Daze, Genesis, Two Ways West, No Light from Heaven, Lines on the Border, La Dolce Vita on the Northern Side, Sandino on the Border, Managua Mon Amour (Nevermore), plus Martín and Marvin and this new volume.

orthern Side, Sandino on the Border, Managua Mon Amour (Nevermore), plus Martín and Marvin and this new volume.