Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Last weekend, I went to the Tucson Festival of Books with my friend and fellow Border Beat reporter, Maty. Last semester we both took a UA Mexican American studies class, Chicana/o Psychology. That’s where we first discovered Stephanie Elizondo Griest– through her book Mexican Enough: My Life Between the Borderlines

This book meant a lot to us both. Elizondo Griest writes about her Texan roots and half Mexican, half American heritage. She didn’t learn Spanish until she ventured to Mexico in her early 30s and the book is about subsequent experiences there. At the Festival of Books, she was there with a panel of Mexican American authors where Maty and I were able to meet with her.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest and Amanda Portillo at The University of Arizona.

During her portion of the panel, Elizondo Griest said, “I’ve always wanted to be one of those women that could start a story with, ‘this one time in Abu Dhabi…'” on how she’s always had what she refers to as wanderlust-and she shared how she got her degrees in journalism and Russian at UT Austin– after meeting a CNN correspondent who told her to “learn Russian” in order to be able to travel and report like him. She did just that. She traveled to Russia and then some, and even turned down a job at the Associated Press after one year to write her first book, Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana

After the panel, Maty and I interviewed her. That story should be up on Border Beat in a few days (there’s a great video of Elizondo Griest reading an excerpt from Mexican Enough). However, the best part was putting our reporter personas’ aside and being able to have a regular conversation with each other. How many times do you get to tell an author how much her book meant to you? Or find out just how similar you are- half brown, half white, third-generation, pocha. She told us about her unconventional life and how writing has taken her practically everywhere. The best things, she said, often happen when she asks herself “what’s next?”

Border studies, I keep discovering, do not necessarily adhere to some strict academic standard. It is intellectual, historical, political and journalistic. But, experiences that turned into a book for Elizondo Griest also make for a good study.

If you haven’t realized it yet, I highly recommend Mexican Enough.