“Desert Survival Series” is a collection of poems by Amy Sara Carroll published on the mobile app Transborder Immigrant Tool in 2011. The poems appear to have the primary purpose of communicating survival tactics for immigrants navigating the Sonoran Desert, which extends from Northern Mexico into the Southern United States. However, certain literary choices made by Carroll in this collection of poems allow the desert to transcend confinement to just a specific area of land. The collection is allegorical in nature, and decisions made by Carroll throughout the poems support that interpretation. She characterizes “the desert” as not just the physical space of the Sonoran Desert, but the state of being immigrants are forced to navigate even after they reach their destination in the United States. The literary devices used to make this happen are Carroll’s personification of desert plants, and her use of rapid and concise sentences clustered tightly together. These elements of the work demonstrate that existence in the United States is a harsh and terrifying desert that immigrants must orient themselves in to survive. Carroll asserts that to leave one’s home and enter the desert is akin to being forced to sign a contract agreeing to face a lifetime of hostility, disorientation, and scarcity. The intention of this argument is not to generalize the immigrant experience, but to explore how literary aspects of the piece convey a message beyond mere survival instructions for the physical hardships of the desert, and explore how this subliminal message makes a political and social comment on the life of the immigrant in the US. Undoubtedly, the experiences of immigrants vary, but it is not an extreme overgeneralization to say that the political and social structure of the US adds hardship to the lives of immigrants.
Deserts are understood as barren, arid, rainless, and all but incapable of supporting human life and culture. Deserts are unpredictable, with fluctuating temperatures and the capacity for massive storms and flooding. This makes them inhospitable to plants and animals, and especially to people, who require at least some water to survive. Many poems in the collection are devoted to instructions for procuring water, highlighting its scarcity in the desert and reaffirming its centrality to human, plant, and animal life. Scarcity is the defining characteristic of a desert, as it is a place where resources, such as water, are few and far between, and one cannot count on anything to be available. The United States can be understood as a desert in terms of its scarcity: it lacks resources for immigrants. This reduces their individual freedom and guides their decisions, as the harshness of the environment means the desert dweller has very little agency.
Through the personification of multiple desert plants, the immigrant is placed as perpetually within this expanded conception of “desert.” One instance of this personification is Carroll’s description of the creosote bush in the fourth poem. “Ten years after a 1962 Nevada thermonuclear explosion destroyed twenty-one creosote bushes, twenty re-sprouted as if to protest, ‘We will not be moved.’ Hiroshima mon amour—no ghosts, no burns, no shadows. The creosote bush simply grows—a survival artist.” Carroll personifies the bushes in two distinct ways: by assigning them speech when she portrays the bushes as saying “We will not be moved”, and by assigning them a human career through describing them as artists. This personification is a comment on the constant reinvention and renegotiation of the immigrant’s identity and existence within the United States. It also speaks to Carroll’s perception of immigrants as resilient in spite of the harsh circumstances they face. By personifying the creosote bushes and assigning them traits Carroll associates with immigrants, the landscape in which they grow can be equated to the landscape in which immigrants live – the United States. Another case where a desert plant is portrayed as an immigrant is in Carroll’s description of the iconic Joshua Tree later in the collection. She emphasizes the plants’ connection to a historical and mythical immigrant: the Old Testament prophet Joshua, one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to explore Canaan to determine if it was safe to lead the Israelite masses there. Carroll highlights the historical personification of these trees by Mormon settlers in the United States, emphasizing the Joshua Tree’s namesake and therefore inviting comparisons to him. She writes, “Mormons referred to the trees—actually shrubs—as ‘praying plants.’ Anthropomorphizing each’s branches, they compared the largest of the yucca evergreens to the Old Testament prophet Joshua as he pointed toward the promised land.” Through this personification, the Joshua Trees are characterized as immigrants, much like the creosote bushes. This personification places these trees that resemble immigrants in the desert, which in turn resembles the United States.
Beyond creating allegorical parallels between the desert landscape and the physical space of the United States, a second literary choice made by Carroll elevates her poetry to also describe the nature of existence within it for the immigrant. This is conveyed through groupings of rapid and concise sentences. In the first section of the final poem, she writes “Draw a perpendicular line that crosses its center. / Stand at the lines’ intersection. Keep west to your left to face true north. / Pick a visible landmark in line with that orientation. / Walk to that landmark; repeat this exercise.” This section delivers instructions that encourage repetition but have no stopping point. She does not say anything to the effect of “Stop this exercise when you’ve reached your destination”. This implies that the monumental task of orienting oneself in a hostile environment is the ongoing task of the immigrant, and one that is necessary for survival in conditions imposed by the desert/United States. Another set of fast-paced sentences conveying urgent instructions comes earlier in the collection, when Carroll describes a myriad of ways to procure water in the desert. Of cutting open a barrel cactus, she writes: “Center yourself, cut out a chunk of the whitish inner pulp from the cactus’ correspondent center. Chew it. Let the juice run down your throat. Spit out the pulp when you’ve sucked it dry. Don’t swallow the pithy fiber. Rest, digest.” Again, there is no instruction on if or when to stop this task, demonstrating how the tasks of basic survival and orientation within the desert/United States are unending. Both of these sections offer short-term and inadequate solutions to the omnipresent problems of getting a sense of direction and acquiring water in the desert. There are no long-term solutions in the desert, just as there is no blueprint for survival within the political and social landscape of the United States for the immigrant. These selections strengthen the allegorical assertion that is central to this argument.
In the eighth poem, Carroll introduces a potential counterargument when describing an account by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus .“According to Herodotus,” she writes, “King Cambyses, twenty-five hundred years ago, lost his entire Persian army (fifty thousand men) in an Egyptian sandstorm. Deserts guard their secrets; no archaeological evidence corroborates Herodotus’s account.” This statement has the potential to undermine the central allegory of this argument, since one could argue that the United States does not guard its secrets; rather, it has spread its ideas, systems, and political and economic will through centuries of geographical and cultural imperialism. This statement can also be viewed as further evidence that the desert describes the state of being for immigrants in the United States, because although the influence of the United States is far-reaching, the secrets illuminating how to survive within it for a marginalized person are locked in a metaphorical and impenetrable black box. These multiple interpretations are due to the poetic nature of the writing, giving it multiple meanings.
The choices of the authors in this text culminate to illustrate that the desert is not terrain that the immigrant is passing through, a place that has a beginning and an end. Rather, the severe conditions of the desert and the sacrifices one must make to survive in it is an apt allegory for the life of the immigrant in the United States. The multiple instances of personification of desert plants sets the stage, placing the immigrant in the desert of the United States. The groups of rapid instructional sentences convey the urgency of the immigrants’ quest for survival, highlighting the overwhelming state of being immigrants are forced to navigate. These poems are not only an assessment of the immense hardships faced by immigrants in the United States, but a witness and testament to them. Carroll wrote that one of the purposes of the collection was to enhance immigrants’ emotional well-being through poetry that recognized the massive obstacles they faced. Recognition for a marginalized population is akin to water in the desert: arduous to find, yet refreshing when finally stumbled upon. These poems provide invaluable recognition for immigrants while introducing powerful commentary regarding immigrant life in the United States.
Works Cited
Carroll, Amy Sara. “The Desert Survival Series/ La Serie De La Sobrevivencia Del Desierto*.” Aster(Ix) Journal, 9 Aug. 2017, asterixjournal.com/desert-survival-series/.