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.”…