The book by Norma Elia Cantu, Canicula: Snapshots of a Girlhood in La Frontera is not only a work of fiction about growing up between two countries with drastically different cultures but is also, and perhaps more importantly, a statement on the human tendency to draw arbitrary boundaries and borders; to create physical separation that aids in the cultural division experienced in the book. One of the most striking features about “Canicula : Snapshots of a Girlhood in La Frontera” by Norma Elia Cantu is that it explores this theme of the separated and divided human condition with real photographs to highlight the fact that these are human beings; not statistics, not fictional characters, but actual people just like us, no matter their culture, that were dealing with the large degree of racism, xenophobia, and outright hostility as a result of the border.

In her novel, “Canicula : Snapshots of a Girlhood in La Frontera” by Norma Elia Cantu, by coupling her work of fiction with these photographs and “proof” that many of the same feelings in the book were felt by actual people during this time Cantu emphasizes one the greatest problems with human society; we create so many divisions and in the process, forget that we are all human beings with the same basic sets of wants and needs.

One of the most compelling aspects of “Canicula : Snapshots of a Girlhood in La Frontera” by Norma Elia Cantu is its exploration of the uselessness of boundaries and borders and interestingly, the author seems to make this statement through the very process of writing as she demonstrates how ineffective borders are by blending many styles; the autobiography, family album, fiction, non-fiction all together as if to show her audience that the experiences are all unified and require no boundaries, just as the central idea of the work is to show how damaging and arbitrary borders are. By writing using the technique of mixed genre, the author is creating a two-fold statement on the human condition; at once she is showing how borders create hostility, confusion, fear and even violence while backing this outright statement about the human condition up with the very structure that shows how boundaries are not necessary to communicate effectively. To create a better world that is less hateful and violent, these needless and harmful boundaries, all of which are man-made and thus open to change, must be removed.

The fact that the narrator of this story is a teenage girl searching for who she is both within and outside of her culture is yet another layer of meaning added to Cantu’s statement about borders. It is difficult for this young person to find herself because there are so many boundaries where she has to fit herself in and instead of looking outside of these borders, she keeps trying to find a fit within them. This is yet another complex statement about the human condition more generally because through the themes, the structure, and even the narrator of the story, it is constantly being shown how borders and boundaries are merely keeping us penned in and unable to truly find ourselves in a world culture as opposed into the sub-boundaries we have created for ourselves.

Through this work it is, in a more intimate way, made clear that the human condition suffers from the negative impulsive to constrain and bind; to create borders and divisions that only serve to cut us off from our true nature and one another. The reason why we as a people (as a world more generally) suffer problems is because we too are constantly searching in the mirror and always looking for what small box we should fit into. We get so used to viewing everything in terms of borders and boundaries that it eventually becomes impossible to see outside of them. Instead we grow myopic and fearful of what lies beyond the box and this, quite unfortunately, parallels many of the issues in the world today.

~� ra�؋� ful. Twain creates several white characters, most notably Huck’s own father, who are supposed to be “better” than a slave, yet are terrible and malicious people. This contrast and the feeling that develops over the course of the novel that Jim is the only person a young boy like Huck can rely on speaks to Twain’s anti-slavery sentiments as he is clearly demonstrating that white people are by no means better people simply on account of their race and thus the whole institution of slavery is incorrect and unfounded.

Twain paints Jim as a character who is more of a father and true friend than Huck could ever know and the various well-intentioned but hopelessly hypocritical and flawed white characters pale in comparison. One critic remarked that this was a slight attempt of  “an effort, albeit a flawed and unfinished one, to transcend the limitations of post-Reconstruction racism and racialism” (Valkeakari 30) in the sense that Twain wanted to show that race was simply a construct, that perhaps the best and most honest people were not those in power. While Valkeakari is quite cynical about Twain’s attempt to convey an anti-slavery message, it is quite easy to disagree with this and suggest that the very creation of Jim as the most reliable character and a character around whom much of the action revolves signifies a direct and strong attempt to relate a negative message about the founding myths of the institution of slavery—most notably that slaves are not complete people; that they are subhuman.

In addition to making Jim the only shining example of an honest character throughout the text (with the exception of Huck himself, of course) it is important to note that Twain made the conscious decision to set The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in a time when slavery was still legal. This lends further to the idea that this text is a direct attempt to speak to the many ills of slavery and that it is trying via the character of Jim, to deconstruct the underlying myth of slavery; that black slaves were less human than whites and that they required less and were bereft in many of the aspects whites and their religion touted. In fact, Jim is the only character that can be relied on and trusted, even by the reader, and this fact makes the text a compelling work against the institution of slavery.

Works Cited

Pinsker, Sanford. “Huckleberry Finn and the Problem of Freedom.” Virginia Quarterly Review 77.4 (2001), 642-649.

Valkeakari, Tuire. “Huck, Twain, and the Freedman’s Shackles : Struggling with Huckleberry Finn Today.” Atlantis (0210-6124) 28.2 (2006), 29-43.