My New Book IMAGINARY LINES

[Linton Robinson]

I am so pleased to have my new title IMAGINARY LINES out at last on Adoro Books... most of it was written ten years ago for California mags and Harpers. It's some of my favorite writing, inspired by my collaboration with Ana Maria Corona.

It's a combination of reminiscence of Mexican girlhood and cooking, interviews with border people from illegal maids to gigolos to matadors... all explorations of the invisible lines of nationality, culture, sex, food, and blood that divide us and tie us together.


Tales, interviews, and culture/culinary essays that drew fans in border region papers and Harpers magazine, IMAGINARY LINES gives a warm, humorous, sometimes dark portrait of frontiers not just of the Mexico/California border, but of many invisible fault lines in the human condition: rich/poor, third/first world, home/foreign, male/female.

A rare collaboration between two writers across some of the more obvious lines--Catholic Mexican mother Ana Maria Corona and jaded American muckracker Linton Robinson--IMAGINARY LINES transforms the life stories of maids, matadors, gigolos, cooks, gamblers, and con men into metaphors for the vague but palpable fault lines that separate us, yet bind us together.

IMAGINARY LINES is distinguished by cover artist Victor Cauduro, one of Mexico's finest and most celebrated painters, and by Pulitzer nominee Luis Urrea, who considers it a "well guided tour" to the labyrinths of interculture interface.