Migration

Migration is perhaps the most consistent theme in Alarcón's stories -- in each one, the characters are going, or have come from, somewhere else. He sets this tone in the first story in the collection, "The Thousands," in which an unnamed group of people forges a new civilization on a then-unnamed piece of land. This not the last time we will hear of the neighborhood: in "The Bridge," we learn that The Thousands is where the narrator's uncle Ramón and his wife Matilde have made their home. In this way, Alarcón demonstrates migration's essential role in the flow and formation of human society. What at the beginning of the collection is an upstart community has become, by its end, an integral part of the city that surrounds it.

Alarcón also points to migration as an opportunity for both self-discovery and self-reflection. The...