In the midst of working on his latest project, about the concept of walls, cultural anthropologist Anand Pandian found himself volunteering with a group called Tucson Samaritans — a humanitarian organization that leaves water and food for migrants in the desert.
One day, another volunteer had him stop him by a cross on the side of the road. The cross marked the place where a migrant woman some years before had walked carrying a stillborn child that was born while the woman was walking through the desert.
The result of Pandian’s work is a book titled "Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life and How to Take Them Down."
In the wake of the 2016 election, he traveled across the country — including a stop in Scottsdale — to try to find out why we’re so divided as a nation and how we might be able to get back together.
Pandian says his experiences taught him that sometimes walls are made of mortar, but that sometimes they’re made of mistrust.
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Mathew Sandoval is a teaching professor at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University and author of "Día de los Muertos: A Chicano Arts Legacy."
