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Crossing

Plot Summary: Luis Lomos, a sixteen-year old boy from a small Mexican town, undertakes the journey to the United States. Trapped in a railroad car with twelve other undocumented workers, he meets an old man named Berto Morales who has a terrible secret that he feels he must confess before he dies. The short trip becomes interminable as the men slowly suffocate to death. The tale is based on a true event.

Drift

Plot Summary: Robert Lomos, a troubled young man, decides to run away from his grandmother's care in San Antonio, Texas, to find his estranged mother who has left for Los Angeles. His plan is to convince her that he will assume the responsibilities of a "man" and that he will care for her and his infant brother.

Day of the Dead

Plot Summary: A prequel to Crossing. Berto Morales, a major character in Martinez's first novel, narrates the year he spends searching for the murderer of his pregnant wife during the Mexican Revolution. The novel begins in 1912 on the Day of the Dead and ends on the same date in 1913. Bent on revenge, Berto finds that what he most wants is a form of redemption. He gets that opportunity when he meets Isabella, a young widow with a daughter in need of protection during the uptick in violence that follows the assassination of President Francisco Madero in 1912.

Countering the Counterculture: Rereading Postwar American Dissent from Jack Kerouac to Tomas Rivera

Martinez explores the theme of "movement" and "mobility" in defining the American counterculture. He argues that Mexican and Chicano migrant writers practice a form of dissent that emphasizes the role of forced movement that underscores the limitations of democratic discourse. His central critique of the "American counterculture" centers on the work of several Beat writers whom Martinez claims ignore the political limits of individualism thus subverting their own social criticism of American corporatism and conformity.