Dreamland: The Way Out of Juarez - Softcover

Winner, Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association, 2011 What do you call a place where people are tortured and murdered and buried in the backyard of a nice, middle-class condo? Where police work for the drug cartels? Where the meanings of words such as "border" and "crime" and "justice" are emptying out into the streets and flowing down into the sewers? You call it Juarez or, better yet, Dreamland. Realizing that merely reporting the facts cannot capture the massive disintegration of society that is happening along the border, Charles Bowden and Alice Leora Briggs use nonfiction and sgraffito drawings to depict the surreality that is Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Starting from an incident in which a Mexican informant for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security murdered a man while U.S. agents listened in by cell phone-and did nothing to intervene-Bowden forcefully and poetically describes the breakdown of all order in Juarez as the power of the drug industry outstrips the power of the state. Alice Leora Briggs's drawings-reminiscent of Northern Renaissance engraving and profoundly disquieting-intensify the reality of this place where atrocities happen daily and no one, neither citizens nor governments, openly acknowledges them. With the feel of a graphic novel, the look of an illuminated medieval manuscript, and the harshness of a police blotter, Dreamland captures the routine brutality, resilient courage, and rapacious daily commerce along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Author of many acclaimed books about the American Southwest and US-Mexico border issues, Charles Bowden (1945-2014) was a contributing editor for GQ, Harper's, Esquire, and Mother Jones, and also wrote for Aperture. His honors included a PEN First Amendment Award, a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction, and the Sidney Hillman Award for outstanding journalism that fosters social and economic justice. ALICE LEORA BRIGGS has exhibited her drawings and architectural installations in museums, galleries, and nonprofit spaces across the United States and in Europe. Recent fellowships and grants include awards from Border Art Residency, Jentel Foundation, Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, Arizona Commission on the Arts, Contemporary Forum and Cummings Endowment Fund, Phoenix Art Museum, Tucson/Pima Arts Council, Larry E. Elsner Art Foundation, and Dallas Museum of Art's Otis and Velma Davis Dozier Travel Grant. She lives in Lubbock, Texas.