Reviews

Los niños perdidos (un ensayo en cuarenta preguntas) by Valeria Luiselli

bibliobrandie's review against another edition

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5.0

From 2014 to 2015, Mexican writer Luiselli worked as a translator for the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services in New York, where she administered a 40-question survey to unaccompanied and undocumented minors who fled Central American the United States. I read this as I was reading The Displaced and it was incredibly valuable for understanding the crisis that immigrants to the U.S. are facing. This is a call to action and a plea for empathy and understanding.

Everything within this short, 119 page book is beautifully written and harrowing but one thing she wrote has stuck with me long after I closed the book: "What happens to children during their journey through Mexico is always worse than what happens anywhere else. The numbers tell horror stories...80% of women and girls who cross Mexico to get to the US border are raped on the way. The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precaution as they begin the journey north." They leave home knowing this but choose to make the journey anyway because life in their home country is so much worse.

divya5's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring sad fast-paced

5.0

shelbynuck's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

5.0

An essay about youth migrating to the United States from Latin America and the 40 questions they’re asked when seeking citizenship/asylum. 

Sharp and Biting are the best descriptors for this essay. A must read. 

“The priority juvenile docket, in sum, was the government's coldest, cruelest possible answer to the arrival of refugee children. Ethically, that answer was more than questionable. In legal terms, it was a kind of backdoor escape route to avoid dealing with an impending reality suddenly knocking at the country's front doors.”

“Its urgent that we begin talking about the drug war as a hemispheric war, at least one that begins in the Great Lakes of the northern United States and ends in the mountains of Celaque in southern Honduras.”

Words Matter. 
“children caught while crossing illegally, laws that permit their deportation, children who come from the poor and violent towns. In short: barbarians who deserve subhuman treatment.”

liambossant's review against another edition

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informative sad fast-paced

3.75


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gvstyris's review

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challenging informative medium-paced

4.25


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readingthroughinfinity's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

alicebm's review against another edition

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challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

cruzsuzanne's review against another edition

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4.0

A heartbreaking read about the plight of refugee children in America.

"Other times, the answers point to push factors—the unthinkable circumstances the children are fleeing: extreme violence, persecution and coercion by gangs, mental and physical abuse, forced labor, neglect, abandonment. It is not even the American Dream that they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born."

"From the beginning, the crisis was viewed as an institutional hindrance, a problem that Homeland Security was “suffering” and that Congress and immigration judges had to solve. Few narratives have made the effort to turn things around and understand the crisis from the point of view of the children involved. The political response to the crisis, therefore, has always centered on one question, which is more or less: What do we do with all these children now? Or, in blunter terms: How do we get rid of them or dissuade them from coming?"

"Why did you come to the United States? we ask. They might ask a similar question: Why did we risk our lives to come to this country? Why did they come when, as if in some circular nightmare, they arrive at new schools, in their new neighborhoods, and find there the very things they were running from?"

No child deserves to live this kind of life.

brbcrying's review against another edition

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emotional informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.25

lizaroo71's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

When anyone enters the country without documentation, they are asked a series of questions. Luiselli volunteers as an interpreter for unaccompanied minors when they have to answer these questions. 

This is definitely profound and complex. This isn’t an easy issue, but anything that looks to label and divide skews complicated. My hope is that people find compassion, but I am keenly aware of the times in which I live. 

The title refers to Luiselli’s daughter asking her to tell her how a story ends when she recounts a day’s work. The difficult part is not knowing where the story ends. That makes for heartbreaking moments.