Thirteen essays on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands examine the cultural interplay between the two countries as representative of the interaction between Anglo and Hispanic America. They explore such topics as the evocation of the Southwest in the writings of Harvey Fergusson, Miguel Mendez, and Rudolfo Anaya, the role of the American writers John Dos Passos and Katherine Anne Porter in bringing contemporary Mexican painters to the attention of critics and buyers in the United States, and the rise of Chicano literature in the 1960s. Robinson charts the reciprocal influence of Anglo and Hispanic culture and literature, and demonstrates that the border is not a dismissible margin of either country but rather is central to the construction of an American identity. While most of the essays were previously published in various journals and books, all were revised, expanded, and updated for this volume to enable a new and wider look at the subject.