Kathy Taylor

Through The Rearview Mirror

Name: The Birthing House
Author: Kathy Taylor
ISBN: 978-1962102247

Inspired by informal conversations with Mexican taxi-drivers and developed through ethnographic research, this book is a collage of stories and voices from the streets and taxis of a provincial city in central Mexico. A profesora gringa rides in the back seat of taxis, learning about Mexican reality through the eyes of her cultural guides. Through the rearview mirror two worlds meet, and the professor sees reflected in the mirror new perspectives on her own culture to the north as well. The academic work turns into a novel, and the author becomes a character-passenger in the story that is written.

“I’ve been driving taxis for 23 years. I have lived some incredible stories, that if I told them, they would leave you with your mouth open and your eyes wide. If I were to write a journal, for example, people just wouldn’t believe it. They would say it was a novel.”

—a Mexican taxi-driver

Reviews

“Una escritora que no ofrece ninguno de los tradicionales consuelos de la novela o las memorias. Kathy Taylor es una turista que se plantea el problema de mirar de verdad, especialmente todo eso que no puede ser formulado. Su libro describe encuentros con muchos taxistas. Uno y otro y otro. Mil y uno. Pero estos hombres que ven pasar la vida por el espejo retrovisor, encuentran en Kathy Taylor un oído atento y una comprensión y una solidaridad que luego ella recupera en diálogos y descripciones de tierna belleza y profunda comprensión. Este es un libro de iniciación. Para aprender a vivir. Y Kathy Taylor es una escritora experta en hablar directamente al corazón humano.”
Gustavo Sainz Nov. 10, 2000

“A writer who doesn’t offer any of the traditional consolations of the novel or memoir. Kathy Taylor is a tourist who poses the problem of truly seeing, especially all that can’t be codified. Her book describes encounters with many taxi drivers. One after another and another. A thousand and one. But these men who see life pass by through the rearview mirror, find in Kathy Taylor an attentive ear and an empathy and solidarity that she later recovers in dialogues and descriptions of tender beauty and profound understanding. This is a book of initiation. To learn to live. And Kathy Taylor is an expert writer for speaking directly to the human heart.”