The southwest border towns located in the southwest United States influence a dark topical narrative of human-trafficking, narco-trafficking, and femicide geographically specific to this area and the post-NAFTA time period. By a dark topical narrative, I mean the stark vulnerability and hopeful healing within a border town. According to one interpretation of border towns, drug dealing and kidnapping emerge as factors causing the disappearance of Rafa and Crucita. The Guardians by Ana Castillo clearly broadens this interpretation, characterizing four narrators, whose voices proclaim the reworking of border violence as the “murders continue” (185). Furthermore, as the novel broadens, the intense brutality along the U.S- Mexican border resulted …show more content…
Using detail to form an extended context, the writer commands the reader to know keywords such as dark topical narrative, shows that these narratives have been expanded and critiqued, and signifies how critiquing narratives enable readers to discover a more in-depth meaning. After their productive context, the writer uses signposting, or offers cues to the reader similar to signs on a hiking trail, to guide audiences in the direction they are journeying through. This destination is their argument statement (sentence 6): as tragedies plague the border town, these narratives expand on those tragedies and strengths that result from those tragedies. Moreover, the writer affirms that characterization and intertextuality are significant to their analysis, and the part of the intro where they report the steps essential to proving their argument, is the roadmap. Finally, notice how they frame their stakes to foreground the issues in border towns through the formation of a cause and effect process, which the phrase (“A close reading for…”)