Reviews with content warning for Suicidal thoughts - In the Country We Love: My Family Divided

The author has a beautiful way of telling a tense and emotional story with a unique and funny voice. It is frequently sad but also hopeful and overall it's just informative and realistic.

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vaniavela's review

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emotional medium-paced

5.0

Imagine being 14 years old when your family is deported.

Diane's memoir is a look at how she fell through the cracks of the system after her parents were taken away. No one took care of her, leaving her to fend for herself.

Each chapter includes a great photograph that gives us a glimpse of what her family was like back then, along with beautiful footnotes.

The writing style is very thoughtful and shows us the author's strength and courage. She not only shares her story, but discusses how this traumatic situation had an impact on her life.

Like Diane's family, this is a situation that happens every day. Children are taken from their parents, leaving them alone, scared and on their own. This is such a beautiful, eye opening book. Highly recommended.

TW: forcible family separation, deportation, self-harm, suicidal ideation, xenophobia, racism, depression, anxiety.

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maggies's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful informative medium-paced

2.0

An important story, to be sure, but written in much too conversational a tone for my liking. The content was at least high school level, given the wide array of traumas explored, but the style was more like second grade, and it was a turn off for me. Also, perhaps because the book was initially published in 2016, the ideas/solutions presented in the call to action in the last two-ish chapters were less than revolutionary. I definitely felt for Diane and her family and families like hers, just couldn't get on board with the delivery.

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marjoryreads's review

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense slow-paced

3.5

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ellornaslibrary's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

This book has heavy, emotionally challenging content which might be a given considering the subject matter though I still wanted to put it out there. If you're not in a great place? I'd recommend holding off a little. I'd been putting this book off for awhile cause I knew it'd be a difficult listen. Yet I'm glad I finally got to it. While I cried a lot while reading this book? I also smiled and laughed and blushed and raged and a thousand other things. There's obviously stuff in here that I could not relate to — experiences that I can't even imagine going through let alone surviving — yet there's other parts that are relatable as well. It's a great book that's enhanced by the lovely job Diane Guerrero does telling her story. It feels more like sitting with an old friend who's having a chat than listening to a story from someone you've never met before. What she goes through is something that nobody should ever have to especially as a child. The injustices dealt to her parents were awful and cruel, and again something that nobody should ever have to go through. This story like so many others is proof of the change that needs to happen in the United States so that people get the help they should instead of being treated in such an unjust and unethical manner.

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mondovertigo's review

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challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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n0th4nks's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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