One Book, One Campus: Streaming Videos

Told through the eyes of adolescent Kimberly over the year in which her family is forced to straddle two countries, Life on the Line offers an intimate story from a quintessentially American place, illuminating the changing face of America and the impact of our immigration policies through the story of one girl and her family.

Manuela and Ben Aparicio, sister and brother, brought by their parents in search of a better future, arrived in the Fillmore, California from a rural village in Mexico. Twenty years later, they share their stories of dislocation and their determination to succeed. They sensitively portray their struggles to learn English, excel in school, resist efforts to be pushed into vocational programs and be accepted by their American neighbors. Their story, filmed in the late 1980's, poses critical and relevant questions about what it means to cross the border and make the U.S. home.

The immigration debate is at a fever pitch, and some politicians insist that a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico will solve our problems. But what does the common person know about topography of this border? With approximately 350 million crossings per year, the Mexico-US border is the most frequently traversed international border in the world. Beginning where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico and working its way backward, step-by-step, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, TECTONICS explores the landscapes and physical qualities of this 2,000-mile border.