Reviews tagging 'Excrement'

Solito by Javier Zamora

19 reviews

ladypolf's review

emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment and Deportation

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Xenophobia, Vomit, and Alcohol

Minor: Gun violence, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Medical trauma, War, and Injury/Injury detail

rayannotates's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Racism, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, Dysphoria, and Deportation

knkoch's review

challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

5.0

I read this for a local book club focused on race and own-voices writing on various BIPOC experiences in the US. This is such a well-made book and I’m glad it was selected. 

Javier Zamora writes here of his journey from El Salvador to the US, and as a white American whose citizenship has never been front of mind, I really needed to read this account. Zamora was born the same year I was and made this trek at age 9, so it was uncomfortably easy to think back on myself at the same age, during the same era, and attempt to place my child-self in his shoes. 

I liked that Zamora wrote from the perspective of his childhood mindset during the journey, as it fully embedded me in his experience. It must have been challenging, both in terms of the trauma he had to relive and the difficulty in recounting so much detail. He travels unaccompanied by relatives, but his relationships with the people in his group are moving and provide a sense of the adult experience, too. 

This was dramatic without exaggeration, painful, visceral, unforgettable, and yet something untold thousands of people have gone through and are still going through. Truly a book everyone (especially US citizens) should bear witness to, and the kind of account that should foster deep, human empathy for an experience too often flattened into an impersonal political conflict.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Forced institutionalization, Vomit, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

Moderate: Xenophobia, Excrement, and Sexual harassment

This is a migrant story, with brutal travels through the desert. Medical trauma/children suffering:

one leg of the journey through the desert involves near death by dehydration.

caseythereader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Racism, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Grief, Abandonment, Injury/Injury detail, and Deportation

leweylibrary's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring tense slow-paced

5.0

THIS is the book that someone wanting to understand what it's like to migrate from South or Central America should read rather than American Dirt.

While I do wish I would've gotten a bit more from Javier's adult perspective--that last chapter had me SOBBING--this was still such a powerful and important book. Javier, a poet, has such an incredible voice and apparently an incredible memory because holy cow remembering things with this level of detail so many years later. I also wish we would've gotten to experience more of his reunion with his parents!! That's the part that you're waiting for the whole time and then all you get are two shadows and a small reflection from 2021 on what it was like to see them. I also think I might have enjoyed the physical book more because I do not know enough Spanish for the Spanish and Spanglish parts to be very clear to me audibly 😅 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Excrement, and Deportation

100_pages_hr's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad tense slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Excrement, Abandonment, and Deportation

lettuce_read's review against another edition

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Excrement, Vomit, and Deportation

Moderate: Body shaming

amiegold's review against another edition

hopeful informative inspiring slow-paced

4.5

I feel really guilty for not rating this book higher. But honestly, it was just a bit slow paced for me. I might’ve enjoyed it more if I had read it versus listening to it. I did not enjoy the narration by the author as much, I think because it didn’t match the tone of the book from a child’s perspective. I have coworkers who are immigrants and this book!was very informative and helped me understand what they and their families may be going through. Makes me wish that we had a world without borders, and because of that I recommend reading it 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Excrement and Deportation

internationalreads's review against another edition

emotional reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body shaming, Cursing, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation