Book No. 23 of 2021
This book had been languishing on my “to read” list for several years, and if I had known what a short read it was, I probably would have gotten to it a lot sooner. In any case I’m so glad I finally read it—it definitely cracks my “outstanding” list and is one of those reads I would wholeheartedly recommend to most people.
Luiselli’s essay is beautiful, direct, quietly heartbreaking, and radically hopeful. In a short span of time she lays bare the complexity and the horrors of the child refugee border crisis, the lack of accountability from all the countries involved, the way the labyrinth of the US’s legal system is designed to punish the most vulnerable without addressing the root causes, and the very human impact of this perfect storm. (It’s also a very accessible primer on the basics of the US immigration system and what’s driving refugees from Central America—while it doesn’t help knowing that the people going “Why don’t they just come here the right way?” will never read this, at least it helps knowing that the facts are out there. Also, I would not say this is remotely a “politicized” book in that it takes one side in the red vs. blue dichotomy; Luiselli is direct about the fact that this hemisphere’s migration issues transcend political party or country borders.)
When Luiselli writes plainly and frankly about the sheer incalculable amount of horror and terror existing in the current state of the world, it’s very easy to feel hopeless. However, she offers two points of concrete hope: one is her offering for the first step to fixing the issue (and she is very realistic about the fact that it’s monumentally complex) and two is her account of how her students took local action to address the systemic problems in concrete ways. I found myself feeling, against all odds, hopeful for a better world.
Similar Reads
This definitely pairs really well with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s The Undocumented Americans.
I’d also say that some of the themes on community, crisis, and the failings of bureaucratic government complement what Rebecca Solnit writes in A Paradise Built in Hell.