Enrique’s journey, by Sonia Nazario, is the story of young immigrant boy’s journey to the United States. The importance of family and the persistence of an adolescent is what the book tries convoy to the audience. Sonia Nazario, the autor of the book, is a journalist who was known for her work with the publisher, the Los Angeles Times. She has won the Pulitzer Prize for her rigorous work in the field of journalism. What she wanted to achieve with the novel was to shed some light on the young kids making the same journey Enrique does and the dangerous they endure to reunite with their parents or leave their life of poverty. Sonia Nazario was born in the United States and holds her degrees in Latin American Studies. In the Prologue of the novel …show more content…
While she is there Lourdes finds work in a factory sorting tomatoes for a measly wage. After several months she is able to get her hands on a fake social security card and finds a job in Beverly hills as a nanny. Though the thought of taking care of children while hers are in Honduras drives Lourdes to quit and instead search for new opportunities. Lourdes faces these problems and perseveres to provide for her family in Honduras. Enrique while his mother has been in the United States has been living with different family members. He lives with his grandmother while there he develops an addiction to sniffing glue due to the depression of being alone without a mother or a father this however makes his grandmother scold him and forces him to sleep in a stone hut outside the house. He moves with his uncle and establishes a close relationship but in an attempted robbery he is killed, and Enrique is yet again left alone. Enrique’s decision to leave Honduras is to find his mother he feels that their reunion well make him feel whole and give him a sense of …show more content…
Before making it to the United States his journey was filled with hardships that many immigrants go through. He is caught seven times before the success of the eighth. In those attempts Enrique recalls the beating he took from six men while train hoping. The people of nearby cities in Mexico not wanting to help and, in some cases, turning them into the authorities. Corrupt police officers robing them and being tracked by notorious gangs with the only outcome being death if caught. Although, Enrique saw the possibility of injury and death was high he didn’t want to go back to Honduras to an empty filled life. He persisted to find his mother at the cost of his own life. The conditions that children face when making the journey from Central America to the United States are gruesome. They face the consistent harassment of corrupt police officers who rob them and even beat them to death. Gang violence surrounds the immigrants’ routes, the gangs have no problem killing and raping the young immigrants. The females who take part in trying to make it to the states are a much higher percentage of rape throughout their
The book “The distance between us” is the story of immigration written by Reyna Grande. The book recounts her true personal story before and after entering the United States. The story shows how poverty and parenting impacts the family. Grande was 2years old when her dad left her, 4 years old when her mom (Juana) left her and her two siblings (Mago and Carlos) with her grandmother in the Mexico. Since, then she was seeking her parents either her dad or mom in the story. Her illegal and undocumented entry in the United States depicits the struggles and challenges she faced while crossing the border. After she arrived in the United States she found that living in the U.S was not that easy what she has dreamed for and “The man behind the glass” was not like that what she had met before. Her siblings were angry because of their not supportive mother and abusive father which weaken their intimacy in the family. Instead, Mago her elder
As you read you can picture his settings and characters. For the purpose of this book review, the reader will discuss how a migrant community in search of the “American Dream” encounters the “American Nightmare” as described by Tomás Rivera in his novel, “ …And the Earth Did Not Devour Him.”
Change is a very difficult aspect of life. Every day thousands of people all over the world face a change in life. In all four stories and poems, “ My First Free Summer”, “Exile”, “Antojos”, and “ All-American Girl”, written by Julia Alvarez, the main character faces the drastic transits that come with immigration. Through Alvarez’s own personal experience, her writing takes a unique turn as she incorporates different techniques such as Spanish, sensory images, and figurative language to showcase the difficult transit immigrants face when coming to a new country.
Meaning, this book would be perfect to teach students life lessons that are important. Three of the themes that are good life lessons are: family, perseverance and survival, and humanization and dehumanization. All of these are found throughout the whole book which makes them hard to forget. Family is shown throughout the book because when Enrique’s mom leaves, all Enrique wants to do is to be with her. A short summary from Litcharts.com explains why family is such a big theme throughout the whole book. “Enrique’s Journey, as its title indicates, is the non-fiction story of a 17-year-old boy’s struggle to travel across Mexico to the United States to reunite with his mother. The events depicted in the book are set in motion by an initial instance of abandonment: Lourdes’ difficult decision to leave Enrique and his sister Belky in Honduras, while she seeks work in the United States to send money back to her family.” This whole quote shows, even though it was a hard choice for Lourdes, it was the right one because it was to help her family. Another theme that was found in the book that is a good lesson is about perseverance and survival. Survival is a trait everyone has, but this book highlights its importance, especially on the trains. Litcharts.com says, “He gives himself a time limit that shows his perseverance and the gravity of his decision: he will make it to his mother even if it takes a year. Despite the dangerous circumstances jumping trains, facing corrupt policemen, immigration checkpoints and officers, bandits, and gangsters, Enrique persists.” This teaches the readers that it is important to push through every difficulty no matter what, and that it is highly significant to survive to achieve the goal. The last theme that is found in Enrique’s Journey that is a good lesson for readers is dehumanization and humanization. This theme is found
The book, “Y no se lo trago la tierra” by Thomas River grasp a point of view of a migrant community, as manifestations of Chicano culture, language, and experience as understood by a first person point of a young male protagonist. The setting of the book takes place of a year during the 1950s and uses a variety of perspectives and voices to follow the boy’s passages into adolescence. As the setting of the book moves from Texas to upper Midwest to the ye...
Similar Themes in Richard Rodriguez' Aria: Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood and Carmen Tafolla's In Memory of Richi
Rodriguez’s situation was that “his parents are immigrants to the United States and several of his siblings were born in the United States in the State of Texas.” His dad was well educated back in their country, Mexico, but they’re being declined because of the existence of bigotry. “His parents were having a tough time finding a job because of their situation – they have found several jobs but are paid below minimum sometimes.” Rodriguez’s parents have multiple jobs just to survive on their daily basis. Rodriguez’s family situation has affected them all – Luis was affected the most and went astray as he was so desperate into fitting into the society and is able to help his parents. No matter how hard life will be, there are ways to avoid gangs and criminal behavior – government programs and other resource center helps a family to survive and even lend a hand to parents and educate them of how to suppress their child to go astray and be involved with crimes and gang
The main events of the story occur in Honduras and Mexico. Tegucigalpa, Honduras is where Enrique was born and raised by several family members. In Tegucigalpa, Enrique is shuffled from house to house simply because he is unable to control his emotions. This makes Enrique angry and he begins to rebel against the people he lives with. At the age of 17, Enrique decides to leave his family in Honduras and travel to the United States in hopes that he will reunite with his mother. His journey will take him through Chiapas, Mexico, the most hostile city at the point of his travel. In Chiapas, corrupt Mexican police officers and gangs stop migrants and order them to give up anything in their possession. Enrique was beaten and thrown off a train in Chiapas by gang members who raiding the train. After being thrown off of the train Enrique realizes that the journey is not going to be as easy as he dreamed it was. The second most hostile city of the trip, Oaxaca is where many migrants are deported. The people of Oaxaca have a very distinct way of speaking and behaving. In Oaxaca Enrique is kept on toes, wondering if he will be deported because of his awkward dress and dialect. The last important place in the story is Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. Nuevo Laredo is last stop for immigrants travelling to the United States. From Nuevo Laredo immigrants will illegally enter Texas and begin their struggle for financial success in America. Enrique does finally enter Texas after being pushed on a boat from Nuevo Laredo. Once he entered Texas, Enrique takes a cab to North Carolina hoping to find his mother. Sonia Nazario begins the story by describing Enrique’s confusion as to why his mother has left him. He doesn’t understand that she can’t afford food and ...
Several encounters shape how the author sees migrants and increase his disagreement with the ideals he learned in the academy. As he tries to help a mother looking for his son, the idea of a humanized man evokes. He understands that people care for the migrants and he feels identified with the woman’s attitude, as he has seen it in his
In the novel “The Book of Unknown Americans” by Cristina Henriquez, one of the most remarkable themes is the American dream of the Rivera family. Alma Rivera- one of the two main characters’s perspective in the novel’s first three chapters illustrate her and her family– the Mexican immigrants’ hopes for their new life in America. It is interesting to learn that the theme “American dream” in this book is one typical example of the immigrants who hold high hopes for a better life in America that they can leave everything of their old lifestyle behind. For Alma, the American dream is considered in terms of better education for Maribel- her daughter and better future for her family. The Rivera is one of many immigrant families who come to America because of a faith in good education for
In the book The House on Mango Street, author Sandra Cisneros presents a series of vignettes that involve a young girl, named Esperanza, growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Esperanza Cordero is searching for a release from the low expectations and restrictions that Latino society often imposes on its young women. Cisneros draws on her own background to supply the reader with accurate views of Latino society today. In particular, Cisneros provides the chapters “Boys and Girls” and “Beautiful and Cruel” to portray Esperanza’s stages of growth from a questioning and curious girl to an independent woman. Altogether, “Boys and Girls” is not like “Beautiful and Cruel” because Cisneros reveals two different maturity levels in Esperanza; one of a wavering confidence with the potential to declare her independence, and the other a personal awareness of her own actions and the decision to take action and wage her “own quiet war (Cisneros 89).
In the book “Enrique’s Journey” written by Sonia Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Nazario talks about the true story of a young Honduran boy named Enrique that was abandoned by his mother Lourdes at the age of 5. His mom left to the United States as an immigrant to work so she can be able to give her poor children a better living. After 11 years without having a mother by his side, makes Enrique decide to go to North Carolina to search for his mother. Traveling from Honduras across the Mexican republic and “El Tren De La Muerte” also known as The Train of the Death, Enrique sets off his long journey to find his beloved mother. Meeting his mother after all this time caused tensions between Enrique and Lourdes, his mother, begin to rise. Enrique resents his mother for having left him, and says that “money does not solve anything”(197).Lourdes tells Enrique that he should blame his father for leaving,
Throughout Enrique’s many attempts at successfully making his way by train to the border between the United States and Mexico, he has encountered people who were more concerned with stopping and harming the travelers rather than ensuring their wellbeing. Therefore this imagery during the journey part of the novel helps to provide the reader with the sense that not everyone in Mexico is out to get the people who are trying to obtain a better
Medina states, “Gang rule is absolute and young people are extremely vulnerable to forced recruitment into the gangs. Adolescents are continually intimidated and subjected to violence, pressurised into joining the gangs or working for them as drug pushers or in other roles” (Medina). This fear dynamic is used in order to promote corruption within the system of migration. The migrants that decide to escape are forced to encounter constant dangers while migrating. Medina states, “Fear of deportation is largely behind the failure to report crimes; in order to get their destination, most migrants will continue on their journey as soon as possible, leaving the experiences behind them, shrouded in silence” (Medina). This silence thrives on the system of corruption which implicates Mexico’s passivity to protect migrants from violence. Overall, this represents enduring the consequences the migrants face and the perseverance to
In Enrique’s Journey Nazario showed a couple different perspectives on the same family in which the mother migrated from