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trickypeanut's review against another edition
3.0
I gave it three stars due to my white guilt and couldn’t give it the two stars it deserves. It’s an important story, but this one is not written in an accessible way to tell that story. Yep, people were stinky, I get it. Yep, toileting was rough, also got it. The rest I really didn’t get because I don’t speak Spanish beyond ‘tambien.’ Skimmed most of it and I am pretty sure I didn’t miss a thing.
fugu_chick's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
tense
medium-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Deportation
Moderate: Abandonment
Minor: Blood
hollyannsa's review
5.0
A well told story. Everyone should read this book. It’s beautiful. And terrible.
vatodd's review against another edition
4.5
Really important story to be told and understand the perspectives of those often not given a chance to do so. Loved the flash forward/Author's note at the end giving us insight to how this memoir came about as a therapeutic outlet for such a harsh experience. It starts off a little slow and there was more potty talk than expected but par for the course when in the perspective of a young boy. Overall an excellent read.
noapathy's review
3.0
This memoir is written from the perspective of the author's 9-year-old self as he travels on his own (with the help of smugglers) from El Salvador to his parents in the US in 1999. His story is horrendous and yet probably not out of the ordinary. I appreciate that writing from his perspective as a child helps break down everything that happened without placing all of the assumptions and labels of adults on the situation, but sometimes it just didn't work for me. Still, reading this was a good balance to the ethnographic study of human smugglers that I just finished (Soldiers & Kings).