How a Cross-border Existence Influenced Journalist and Writer Jean Guerrero


Journalist Jean Guerrero grew up on the U.S.-Mexico border. Her Puerto Rican mother put herself through medical school and met Guerrero’s Mexican father on her first day in San Diego. Guerrero says she’s always been drawn to cross-border issues having traveled back and forth across the border to Tijuana with her dad.

However, Guerrero was forbidden from speaking Spanish in the private Episcopalian school she attended in Chula Vista. Over the years, she slowly stopped speaking the language, which impacted her relationship with her family, particularly her grandmother. It wasn’t until she read Luis Alberto Urrea’s “The Devil’s Highway” in high school that she realized how beautiful her native language was and it made her want to be a journalist.

In this Helen Edison Lecture series, Guerrero talks about her career as a journalist and writer, including her first book, “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir,” which won a PEN Literary, and “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.”

Watch Journalist Jean Guerrero on Politics and Immigration.