Tag: immigration

Review: The Book of Rosy

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Review for “The Book of Rosy: A Mother’s Story of Separation at the Border” by Rosayra Cruz and Julie Collazo

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Although the plot of this story centers around the life of a woman named Rosayra Cruz, this is essentially a book divided in half with two distinct voices. The first section focuses on why and how Rosy left Guatemala for asylum in the U.S. In addition to surrounding the grinding poverty of the region, Rosy’s husband was violently murdered in 2008. She also discusses numerous gang extortion attempts on her business and her own brush with death with a stranger’s bullet. Rosy subsequently takes her youngest son (she has 4 children in all) and leaves for the U.S. She works for a while in States, but later returns to Guatemala for her oldest son, who at barely 12 years old is being threatened by local gangs. It is on her way back from the second trip when she is detained by Customs and Border Patrol in Arizona and both of her sons taken away from her as a part of Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ family separation policy.

The second section of this book details activist Julie Collazo’s effort to create the non-profit group Immigrant Families Together. Her group begins to raise bail funds for detained migrant women, one of whom is Rosy. After Rosy is released from custody, the kindness that surrounds her through the efforts of activists, teachers, and the community is nothing less than inspiring.

I won’t spoil the book by telling you how it ends, but I definitely recommend this over many of the migration stories coming out right now that have questionable points of view (*ahem* “American Dirt” *ahem*).

Definitely put this on your TBR list. Four solid stars.

Review: We Built the Wall

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Review for "We Built the Wall: How the U.S. Keeps Out Asylum Seekers from Mexico, Central America and Beyond" by Eileen Truax (2018)

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

As an educator, I hold the steadfast opinion that until everything’s equal (money, wealth, opportunity), we’ll continue to grapple with the same issues: race and gender inequality,  poverty, crime, and a failing criminal justice system. So when it comes to nonfiction, naturally, these are the topics that I usually find myself reading about.

The other big one–immigration.

We Built the Wall  is a very well written book about Mexican and Central American (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) immigration. The author interviews immigrants living on both sides of the border and in detention centers, as well as the lawyers and organizations that help them.

I must admit that reading this book helped me understand what a complex issue both legal and illegal immigration really is. To those who simply tell immigrants to “go home” because they are here illegally, this book details how going home is nearly impossible, with violence, police corruption, extortion, and threats by criminal gangs making the lives of ordinary people there a living hell. Applying for legal immigration is an option but not very likely to happen for many. For one, it can last years. When a gang threatens to kill your whole family unless you pay them extortion money and your preteen son agrees to join them, there’s an urgency to your movement. Second, legal immigration usually carries with it a highly complicated set of criteria (you must have $$$ to apply, a U.S. citizen to sponsor you, or an employer in the U.S., etc.) that make the process damn near inaccessible to poor people. Therefore, it is understandable that many come illegally, and when caught, attempt to apply for political asylum. This rarely happens, and most are detained during this months-long process.

This book also discusses how much of America’s political asylum policies are still deeply attached to Cold War politics. Cubans who come to the US usually get their asylum request granted, due to the fact that their country is not a democracy. Mexico and much of Central America, however, does not fit this criteria. This policy has gone unchallenged for many years, and upholds a certain status quo that privileges people from certain countries (usually European-influenced) over others and leaves Mexicans, Central Americans, and people from poorer, less industrialized countries at the bottom.

The “Wall” to keep undesirables out of America is not physical but a political one, and has been firmly in place since the Cold War. I won’t give away the whole book here, but I will agree that this is a highly detailed and readable book about the current politics of immigration that I would definitely recommend to anyone.

Review: The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life

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Review for "The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life" by Lauren Markham (2017)
 
Rating: 4.75 stars

I tend to be attracted to books that showcase timely social issues in a readable, narrative format. This is just such a book.

This is the true story of Ernesto and Raul Flores, identical twins who left their home in El Salvador in 2013 and illegally came to America without their parents at the age of 17. In their small rural town, the twins live with seven other siblings and their parents in crippling poverty and in constant fear of violent criminal gangs, which rule the countries of the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras) with a iron fist. For $7000 each, Ernesto and Raul’s parents seek out a loan shark to pay for the services of a coyote, a smuggler who moves people through Central America and Mexico and finally through the desolate desert interior of the U.S. The story goes into detail of their capture in the desert by border patrol, detainment in a facility for unaccompanied minors (mostly from Central America), and their reunion with an older brother who also came north in the same fashion several years before.

The story, however, doesn’t stop there. Markham follows her subjects through the myriad of challenges that make up the twins’ new American life: entering school, finding legal representation to fight deportation, learning English, paying down their accumulating $19,000 coyote debt, the struggle to send money home, family problems, and of course, the struggles that simply come with being teenagers. Interspersed throughout the book are snippets of ‘boots on the ground’ research done by the author of the various aspects of the Central American immigrant experience–their journey, frequent capture, detainment, and (almost always) deportation.

I really loved this story because it was told in an easy to follow narrative style that completely humanizes the “illegal aliens” that the current president would love to build a wall to keep out. You learn about the high, very human cost of these efforts and how, despite what laws or wall is erected, many are still willing to risk it all to live the American dream, even if it means death.

Loved this book. Get it right away!