A COSMOPOLITAN LAWYER: JUST SOME READINGS I HAVE ENJOYED LATELY

First, this blog replaces my previous blog, thecosmoplitanlawyerblogspot.com . Second, unlike that earlier blog, the present one is primarily meant as a record of my readings. It is not meant to suggest that others will be or should be interested in what I read. And third, in a sense, it is a public diary of one who is an alien in his own American culture. A person who feels at home just about anywhere, except in his birthplace . . . America.

Monday, February 3, 2014

A SPIRITUAL TRAVELLER

Richard Rodriguez, Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography (New York: Viking, 2013) ("If you would understand the tension between Mexico and the United States that is playing out along our mutual border, you must understand the psychic tension between Mexican stoicism--if that is a rich enough word for it--and American optimism. On the one side, the Mexican side, Mexican peasants are tantalized by the American possibility of change. On the other side, the American side, the tyranny of American optimism has driven Americans to neurosis and depression, when the dream is elusive or less meaningful than the myth promised. This constitutes the great irony of the Mexican-America border: American sadness has transformed the drug lords of Mexico into billionaires, even as the peasants of Mexico scramble through the darkness to find the American dream." Id. at 139.).