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ivassavi's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
tcande1aria's review against another edition
5.0
This book was so gut wrenching and yet inspirational. I’m grateful that Rosayra was given the space to voice her story in this book and that she was raw, not hiding the parts that didn’t make her look great. It was real. Bringing in the voice of the IFT and Julie’s role in the second half was an interesting choice that really added to the book for me.
The book was honest and heart wrenching, showing some of the worst and some of the best of people. It was one story of desperation but also hope and how a working mom can still find time to help another mom in need. I also really liked the resources and action items given at the end.
The book was honest and heart wrenching, showing some of the worst and some of the best of people. It was one story of desperation but also hope and how a working mom can still find time to help another mom in need. I also really liked the resources and action items given at the end.
carolinegarza's review against another edition
5.0
Beautiful heart wrenching story. Rosy is a woman of faith who talks about her relationship with God that sustained her as she sought to cross the border twice to seek asylum. The other voice in the story is one of the volunteers who helped many woman reunite with their families during the zero tolerance policy. This story opened my eyes to sides of immigration I had never heard of while also drawing me into the story being told.
nancidrum's review against another edition
4.0
After reading American Dirt, not once, but twice because it so captured me, I really wanted to continue my knowledge of the current immigration process with a true-life book. The Book of Rosy came up on Goodreads with solid recommendations.
Like many I watched as the inhumane treatment of immigrants and particularly mothers and their children marched across our TV screens during the Trump administration. Rosayra Pablo Cruz was one of those mothers.
This is the accounting of Rosy's desperate journey to escape terror in her home country of Guatemala with her two sons in tow. The majority of the book is centered around Rosy and her sons. In Part II we are introduced to Julie Schwietert Collazo, the cofounder and director of Immigrant Families Together. Without Julie and her amazing volunteers, Rosy and other immigrants would have a very different ending. Rosy's story is the emotional telling of the story we all need to hear, no matter how gruesome and difficult to read, whereas Julie's part of the book is the more factual and informational part. Together they make for a personal, educational account. Both were equally moving for me and both instilled hope for a better future for immigrants.
Like many I watched as the inhumane treatment of immigrants and particularly mothers and their children marched across our TV screens during the Trump administration. Rosayra Pablo Cruz was one of those mothers.
This is the accounting of Rosy's desperate journey to escape terror in her home country of Guatemala with her two sons in tow. The majority of the book is centered around Rosy and her sons. In Part II we are introduced to Julie Schwietert Collazo, the cofounder and director of Immigrant Families Together. Without Julie and her amazing volunteers, Rosy and other immigrants would have a very different ending. Rosy's story is the emotional telling of the story we all need to hear, no matter how gruesome and difficult to read, whereas Julie's part of the book is the more factual and informational part. Together they make for a personal, educational account. Both were equally moving for me and both instilled hope for a better future for immigrants.
hdupont415's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
3.75
timhoiland's review against another edition
5.0
“Among the many things that people don’t understand about migration is this: No one wants to leave the people they love. Most people don’t want to leave the land where they were born, or the soil where their umbilical cord was buried. If they believed that staying would ensure survival, they would never set off on such a treacherous journey.”
That’s Rosayra Pablo Cruz in The Book of Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border (HarperOne), coauthored by Julie Schwietert Collazo, and it’s something I’ve heard in conversations time and again. I heard versions of this when I worked with Cuban refugees in Pennsylvania. I’ve heard it here in Phoenix among asylum seekers from places like Colombia and Venezuela. And I hear it from people in the communities where 1MISSION works in Mexico: “No one wants to leave the people they love.” That is, unless they feel they no longer have a choice.
It’s difficult for many of us to grasp the impossible choices that vulnerable families are forced to make to survive. This is why I’m especially grateful for books like this one, cowritten by a Guatemalan woman who sought—and was granted—asylum in the United States.
After making the arduous journey north through Mexico and into the United States, Rosy is separated from her sons at a prison in Eloy, Arizona. They are apart not for a matter of hours or days, but for months. Meanwhile, Rosy is left in limbo, in every sense of the term. “The isolation, the desolation…” she writes, “this is why the prayer circles [among detainees] are sustenance, a ray of light and a breath of hope in an otherwise dark and airless existence inside Eloy. If my own prayers are not sufficient—and I’d begun having some doubts that they were effective—I feel certain the collective invocations of so many mothers could reach God’s ears and touch His heart.”
This particular story has a happy ending. But not all stories like Rosy’s do. While the ability to seek asylum is a right guaranteed by law, nearly two-thirds of asylum seekers in the United States eventually have their cases denied.
As Rosy and her sons are reunited in New York (that’s where the sons had been sent by the powers that be), we find them being cared for by a Jewish community of people who understand, in their bones, what it means to be a stranger in a strange land. Rosy is not yet legally allowed to work, but her sons enroll in school, and Rosy surprises everyone—including herself—by running for and being named co-president of the school’s PTA.
“We are grateful for any support,” Rosy writes of the family’s experience in their new home, “but we’re not waiting for a handout. We want to be part of your American dream. We want to help you realize it. We want to share in it with you.”
That’s Rosayra Pablo Cruz in The Book of Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border (HarperOne), coauthored by Julie Schwietert Collazo, and it’s something I’ve heard in conversations time and again. I heard versions of this when I worked with Cuban refugees in Pennsylvania. I’ve heard it here in Phoenix among asylum seekers from places like Colombia and Venezuela. And I hear it from people in the communities where 1MISSION works in Mexico: “No one wants to leave the people they love.” That is, unless they feel they no longer have a choice.
It’s difficult for many of us to grasp the impossible choices that vulnerable families are forced to make to survive. This is why I’m especially grateful for books like this one, cowritten by a Guatemalan woman who sought—and was granted—asylum in the United States.
After making the arduous journey north through Mexico and into the United States, Rosy is separated from her sons at a prison in Eloy, Arizona. They are apart not for a matter of hours or days, but for months. Meanwhile, Rosy is left in limbo, in every sense of the term. “The isolation, the desolation…” she writes, “this is why the prayer circles [among detainees] are sustenance, a ray of light and a breath of hope in an otherwise dark and airless existence inside Eloy. If my own prayers are not sufficient—and I’d begun having some doubts that they were effective—I feel certain the collective invocations of so many mothers could reach God’s ears and touch His heart.”
This particular story has a happy ending. But not all stories like Rosy’s do. While the ability to seek asylum is a right guaranteed by law, nearly two-thirds of asylum seekers in the United States eventually have their cases denied.
As Rosy and her sons are reunited in New York (that’s where the sons had been sent by the powers that be), we find them being cared for by a Jewish community of people who understand, in their bones, what it means to be a stranger in a strange land. Rosy is not yet legally allowed to work, but her sons enroll in school, and Rosy surprises everyone—including herself—by running for and being named co-president of the school’s PTA.
“We are grateful for any support,” Rosy writes of the family’s experience in their new home, “but we’re not waiting for a handout. We want to be part of your American dream. We want to help you realize it. We want to share in it with you.”
mdedinsky's review against another edition
5.0
Really powerful and personal account of crossing the border into America as a mother with her kids. Much of the story is about the hard and complex choice of deciding to make the dangerous journey to the states. Much of the story is about the struggles of living and being accepted in America (by both people and the law/country). There was a little about the shocking cruelties that occur as a detainee at the border. Great introduction into the life of a Latin American seeking refuge in America and what that actually means.