If you can read only one book before our Journey, make it this memoir.

A nine-year-old's account of his own unaccompanied migration from El Salvador to the U.S. — rendered with a child's eye for detail and an adult's reckoning with what it cost.

From the Mosaic Fellowship library.

At a minimum, read Chapter 1, "We Built a Bridge Across the Fence," which speaks directly to the border crossing in San Diego/Tijuana we'll experience together.

Pre-Journey briefing with author 09/15/26

A foundational text on identity and the border, not just a physical line, but a lived, in-between space — equal parts memoir, theory and poetry.

From the Mosaic Fellowship library.

Chapter 5: "Ministry in the Desert"
A Tohono O'odham pastor's account of setting up water stations for migrants on tribal land — work that strained relationships within his own community. It connects directly to a water ministry we'll visit in Yuma.

Read Chapter 5 here.

An architect’s unconventional take on the U.S.-Mexico wall — part history, part design manifesto — documenting the surprising, sometimes playful ways people have subverted it: tunnels, seesaws, shared meals passed through the slats.

A memoir that weaves history and cultural criticism to trace how "Latino" came to mean what it means in the U.S. — and all that the label leaves out.

From the Mosaic Fellowship library.

A global tour of borders beyond the U.S.-Mexico line — from Mesopotamia to Scandinavia's Sápmi lands to Israel-Palestine — that treats borders as more than marks on a map, extending the idea to the borders within ecosystems, bodies and even cells.

Science Friday — "These Conservation Scientists Are Keeping the Sonoran Desert Diverse" 

A short primer on the desert we’ll be driving through — its surprising biodiversity, binational scope (two-thirds of it lies in Mexico), and the cross-border scientific collaboration working to protect it. 

Listen here

A documentary that retraces an unidentified migrant's final journey through the Sonoran Desert, led by actor Gael García Bernal — winner of the Sundance World Cinema documentary award.

Watch here (also available on Kanopy, free with many library cards)

A speculative sci-fi thriller imagining a near-future where the border is sealed shut, and Mexican workers connect their bodies to a digital network to labor "in" the U.S. without ever crossing. Set largely in Tijuana — a dystopian extrapolation of maquiladoras, water rights and drone warfare that critics called eerily prescient.

Watch here.