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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
If you are at all interested in immigration you should read this book. Written by a journalist and therefore can be a bit like a newspaper article. But it gives a good picture of what many immigrants are facing. Most people only think about Mexicans crossing the border, but we know that not all latino immigrants are from there.
Just read it. It's worth it.
Just read it. It's worth it.
This book was really eye-opening. It is amazing and sad to learn about what some people go through just to get to this country and to be with their families.
This book is a symbol of one one of the things I love about book club. I would never have heard about it without it. And although I usually want to read for escape, getting enough real life in my job and my husband's job, I was compelled to read this book and learn more, to put a face on an illegal immigrant and his plight. If you have any feeling on the matter, if you live in this country that is struggling with how to deal wiith this issue, read this book. Yes, all voters and politicians, including the President, should read this book. It won't give you answers, but it will make you better informed about the situation.
The premise is that Enrique is a young boy who longs for his mother. Enrique lives practically alone in the Honduras; his mother illegally migrated to the U.S. in order to help pay for her children's lives in the Honduras. Enrique is desperate to go to his mother but has no money to make the journey, so like thousands of others he rides trains from his country to ours. Pulitzer prize winner, Sonia Nazario, writes about his journey, along with the facts surrounding it. She even rode the trains in the same manner as the illegal migrants, so that she would be able to truthfully write about the experience.
The entire book is compelling, but one of my favorite stories is of Padre Leo in Nuevo Laredo, who is both hated and adored for his charity work with migrants. He says: "Jesus wasn't killed for doing miracles. It was because he defended the poor and opposed the rulers and the injustice committed by the powerful."
Very interesting.
The premise is that Enrique is a young boy who longs for his mother. Enrique lives practically alone in the Honduras; his mother illegally migrated to the U.S. in order to help pay for her children's lives in the Honduras. Enrique is desperate to go to his mother but has no money to make the journey, so like thousands of others he rides trains from his country to ours. Pulitzer prize winner, Sonia Nazario, writes about his journey, along with the facts surrounding it. She even rode the trains in the same manner as the illegal migrants, so that she would be able to truthfully write about the experience.
The entire book is compelling, but one of my favorite stories is of Padre Leo in Nuevo Laredo, who is both hated and adored for his charity work with migrants. He says: "Jesus wasn't killed for doing miracles. It was because he defended the poor and opposed the rulers and the injustice committed by the powerful."
Very interesting.
An amazing story of a young man travelling on the top of freight trains from Honduras to the US to find his mother. Based on thousands of true stories.
Quite a story. Nazario won the Pulitzer for her stories in the Los Angeles Times on this topic and the book reads like a journalistic account. Her research is fantastic and the months she spent riding on top of trains and visiting the stops that immigrants make is impressive. The last chapter explores immigration, costs and benefits and policy issues, and is excellent. Talk about a timely read!
This is a harrowing story, made all the more sad because the situation for immigrants has only deteriorated since it was published in 2006. I was particularly struck by the heartbreaking reality of what is happening to these families, and the wide-reaching effects of an absent mother.
Nazario based this book on her Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting in the Los Angeles Times. She set out to explore the challenges faced by Latin Americans pursuing illegal entry into the US, especially children seeking their mothers. She centered her writing around one individual, Enrique, whose mother left him with relatives in Honduras while she went to work in the US. He was five years old when she left, and by the time he was 16, he figured she wasn't coming back so he went to her.
Nazario recounted the multiple times Enrique had to restart his journey, getting past gangs, bandits, and Mexican police and border patrols. He was robbed and beaten, but at least he survived with all his limbs intact, a feat that not everybody who rode the tops of trains could achieve.
Enrique was not a great hero for making the migrant case. He was understandably pursuing his mother but also economic gain. Enrique continued to break laws once he arrived in the US, taking drugs and driving drunk, and then illegally bringing in his girlfriend and their daughter from Honduras to the US. Interestingly, Enrique made a statement that if he were an American citizen, he would want to see more done to halt illegal immigration to the US.
Despite Nazario's choppy writing style, regular contradictory statements, and inability to distinguish between legal and illegal migration, this book was enlightening about the persistence and resilience of migrants to get to the US. The final chapters also provided information about the costs of illegal immigration to US taxpayers, and the crazy patchwork of policies and laws that make US immigration difficult to understand and navigate.
Nazario recounted the multiple times Enrique had to restart his journey, getting past gangs, bandits, and Mexican police and border patrols. He was robbed and beaten, but at least he survived with all his limbs intact, a feat that not everybody who rode the tops of trains could achieve.
Enrique was not a great hero for making the migrant case. He was understandably pursuing his mother but also economic gain. Enrique continued to break laws once he arrived in the US, taking drugs and driving drunk, and then illegally bringing in his girlfriend and their daughter from Honduras to the US. Interestingly, Enrique made a statement that if he were an American citizen, he would want to see more done to halt illegal immigration to the US.
Despite Nazario's choppy writing style, regular contradictory statements, and inability to distinguish between legal and illegal migration, this book was enlightening about the persistence and resilience of migrants to get to the US. The final chapters also provided information about the costs of illegal immigration to US taxpayers, and the crazy patchwork of policies and laws that make US immigration difficult to understand and navigate.
Wasn't a huge fan of the writing style, but the story definitely makes up for it.
I read the young adult version as a possible classroom text for my 9th and 10th grade students. I do think it makes the conversation surrounding immigration at the southern border more accessible to middle and high school students, but I didn’t enjoy reading it as much as I had hoped.
The biggest problem for me was the writing style, which is basically a long news article. It was written in mostly simple sentences, with basic vocabulary that was often repetitive. There wasn’t much in the way of literary analysis opportunities, but you could do some work with rhetorical devices and techniques. There was a lot of “telling and not showing” overall.
I think that following a small group of characters could help some students look at the issue of immigration from a more personal, human perspective, but the 3rd-person narration made it hard to feel really connected to the characters, which could mean some students aren’t as invested in the reading. Because the author mostly told you directly how people felt, the emotional impact was not as strong as I think it could have been. While this may have been a tactical choice while writing, I think a lot of students would struggle to stay engaged.
I do think the discussion of immigration trends and policy in the “Afterword” was clear, unbiased, and would be a good jumping off point for class discussion or further research. I don’t see myself using this whole book in my classroom, but possibly using excerpts would work.
The biggest problem for me was the writing style, which is basically a long news article. It was written in mostly simple sentences, with basic vocabulary that was often repetitive. There wasn’t much in the way of literary analysis opportunities, but you could do some work with rhetorical devices and techniques. There was a lot of “telling and not showing” overall.
I think that following a small group of characters could help some students look at the issue of immigration from a more personal, human perspective, but the 3rd-person narration made it hard to feel really connected to the characters, which could mean some students aren’t as invested in the reading. Because the author mostly told you directly how people felt, the emotional impact was not as strong as I think it could have been. While this may have been a tactical choice while writing, I think a lot of students would struggle to stay engaged.
I do think the discussion of immigration trends and policy in the “Afterword” was clear, unbiased, and would be a good jumping off point for class discussion or further research. I don’t see myself using this whole book in my classroom, but possibly using excerpts would work.