“Belmonte brings an important, timely, and focused study on the various types of both daily and extreme violence that have occurred from the late twentieth century to the present within the US–Mexico borderlands through an investigation of cultural productions by people of the borderlands. More than just an examination, however, Borderland Brutalities is a celebration of the resistance, love, and healing within these communities from a scholar who intimately understands these wounds.”—Melissa Castillo Planas, author of A Mexican State of Mind: New York City and the New Borderlands of Culture