With the nation’s eyes on the southern border amid renewed focus on immigration issues, the narrative of the Rio Grande Valley is often written by onlookers who may have never experienced the iconic Valley summer heat nor enjoyed the impromptu neighborhood pachanga on a late Friday afternoon in the South Texas suburbs.
Among the sea of headlines written about the region, the voices of those who live and grew up there could be in danger of being drowned out.
The new anthology “Voices of the Rio Grande Valley: Vol.1” lifts up the regional stories written by the folks who’ve lived them.
The project was the idea of Paul Henning, who grew up in Mission exploring the sprawled, but hybrid, suburban-rural environment. Later on, while in college, he wrote a creative nonfiction piece about his experience growing up in the Valley. After that, the seed for the project was planted.
“ I always thought about being able to create something to hear the voices of the Rio Grande Valley,” he said.
After college, Henning spent about 10 years traveling the world. Tragedy then struck Henning’s life. He lost his mother, Rachel, in 2021 and his brother, Nathan, shortly after in 2024.
“ I was like, ‘the lights that went out with them… I have to do something to turn this into some sort of blessing for myself and my family and the rest of the Valley because my mom and my brother love the Valley,'” Henning said. “And so I was like, ‘finally, I’m going to do it.'”
Henning partnered up with his friend, Franco Alaniz, and brought contributing editor Sara Silva on board as well.
One of the first stories in the book is called “Memoirs of El Mexico Cafe” by Maria Elena Portillo. Henning regards the piece as powerful. He says the wisdom and perspective of the author’s 75 years was incredibly important.
“I was just so inspired to hear Ms. Portillo,” he said. “She kind of takes us back to, I think it’s the ’60s or the ’70s in McAllen, and it just sets a beautiful perspective of how fast things have changed and what things have been like. It’s funny. It’s got real life history of the area. It’s got some excitement and some emotions. It’s a really beautiful place to start.”
When originally asking for submission for the creative nonfiction anthology, Henning wanted to invite people to participate as a way to form connections and mitigate the tensions of the larger world.
“ I just feel like true stories – true personal stories – are a great place for us to find our commonalities,” he said. “Because whether it’s the media or politics, whatever you want to call it, it seems that there are so many ways that we, as people, are being called to find differences and draw lines in the sand against each other. And it’s exhausting and it really is disheartening.”
To ease this, Henning says using the art of self-expression combined with telling one’s true stories through creative nonfiction is powerful.
“It really can reveal the light inside of us and that, I think, is a healing force. And so that’s kind of what I wanted to invite people to participate in,” he said.
In the future, Henning hopes to make next year’s volume larger with more stories and possibly room for poetry and photography.
But for now, he invites people to send in more stories for Volume 2.
