Solito

 SOLITO was such an emotional read for me. Javier Zamora was nine when he made the long journey to join his parents in America, unaccompanied by anyone he knew. Everything he went through so much. The prose of the book is immaculate as you are able to understand the innocence of a kid in the most difficult circumstances. The accuracy and translation of the Salvadorean slang used in this book brought me to the roots of my own heritage, and also recognize the way Spanglish can be utilized in modern works. 

Javier Zamora tells the grueling story of his seven-week journey as a nine-year-old boy from El Salvador to the United States. It's a story of frightening boat trips, sudden police appearances, debilitating desert crossings, and arrests. The boy and his fellow immigrants suffer from a lack of water, a lack of food, the cold of the night, and the heat of the day. And it's all told in harrowing detail, in the beautiful language of a brilliant poet.

I'd love to see the people who make and enforce our laws read this book.

My full review is on Literary Quicksand: https://literaryquicksand.com/2022/08/book-review-solito-by-javier-zamora/

This book is incredible. Before I even get into any of my review: this is an important memoir, it's impeccably well written, and I so highly suggest putting it on your radar if reading about a child migrant's perilous journey all the way from El Salvador to La USA intrigues you.

In the beginning of Solito, we get to know Javier as he is in the time between when both his parents have migrated to the USA, and he's still in El Salvador. He lived a normal kid life in El Salvador, besides his parents being gone. He went to school, he helped his grandmother and grandfather, and he spent a lot of time with his aunt, Mali. I loved his relationship with her and I'm so glad it was included in the book, so the reader can really get to know him before his “trip”. They snuggle to sleep and are just so loving.

When it's finally time for Javier to make the journey to his parents, he has to just leave school without even saying goodbye to his friends. Nobody can know what he plans to do. How hard would that have to be for a 9-year-old? I'm sure it was just so difficult.

The first bit of Javier's journey, he gets to take a bus up through Guatemala with his grandpa. His relationship with his grandpa was not very deep before the trip, but they end up growing so close as they spend hours taking multiple busses through Guatemala. Their goodbye was rather heartbreaking, and the way Javier describes the love that grew between them was just beautiful. His grandfather can only go to the Mexican border, then has to leave Javier in the care of others (and a coyote who will lead them all the way through Mexico) and return to El Salvador.

Just imagine that. You're on a journey that's perilous, but you don't really know what might happen, or even what could happen. At 9 years old, you're just going along and hoping for the best, and that's really what Javier ends up doing. He relies a lot on the group he ends up travelling with, and they end up growing very close, like a family, as they try to make it across the border.

When Javier has to cross the desert on foot...these scenes are difficult to read, and I'm sure were incredibly difficult for Javier to write and recount. He does mention in his author note having help from his therapist to access and revisit all those feelings, and I can see why. He walked for HOURS and so many miles across the desert, only to be captured by border patrol. And then? He does it all over again.

You can tell Javier is a poet, as he writes so much about the scenes, smells, and textures associated with his time in the desert. The way he names the different types of cacti to give himself something to do, something concrete to take note of, is amazing. He was NINE. And through the whole ordeal, the love that grows between him and his fake family is just...oh my heart. So good.

And exhale. Felt like I was holding my breath for 380 pages. How long can hope last? As long as it needs to. 
My natural impatience made this real life recounting almost unreadable but it's certainly makes it easy to emapthize with an experience so far outside my own. Though as a purposefully childless person in their late 30s, relating to the perspective of a nine year old was a tricky adjustment. Full credit to the author writing this memoir, who so viscerally cast his mind back more than 20 years ago, to breathe life into the pages about a turbulent time in his life. 
All the familial angst, but especially affecting to me was a brief window of time where a boy and his grandfather really related to each other for the first time, where grandfather filled the role of grandfather rather than just being scary.
Such a contrast between tension of waiting, the banal misery of extended poor traveling conditions, then moments of beauty, of care, 
poetic descriptions of physical surroundings, nature, people, food, music, saving grace of a child's imagination in alleviating/distracting from the full weight of grueling circumstances. 
Aggravating and heartbreaking to see the different treatment received at different crossing attempts, specifically by white people.
Speaking of, for my fellow white readers, while you get a fair amount from context, you might want to have a translation site ready, as there's a large amount of dialogue not in English. 
An important read, to broaden my own awareness, a touching personal purpose for publication, as recounted at the end, by the author. 
I'll need some emotional recovery time, but I will be looking up his poetry.