Javier Zamora accomplished a lot in 2019. He won an award for poetry, won an Ivy fellowship in his league, and obtained a visa of “extraordinary ability” that made him feel more confident about his status as an immigrant in the United States. rice field.
But 20 years after he left his parents at the age of 9 and crossed the border on his way to a new life, the immigration journey that killed him still took its toll. I kept going.
“On the surface it was fine,” Zamora said, but inside he was struggling. ‘My personal life was falling apart’
It was the right question at the right time and a turning point for Zamora when a few therapists he happened to meet at a local bar asked him why he was drinking alone one weekday afternoon. was.
The couple introduced him to their student, a child migration specialist who himself came to the United States as a girl. It also provided the building blocks for his new memoir, Solito, on his migration experience.
“Without my therapist, this book wouldn’t exist, I wouldn’t have been married, I wouldn’t have been strangely happy,” said Zamora, now 32.
“Solito,” which arrives from Hogarth on Tuesday, is both a personal piece of healing and an implicit call to nations, including the United States, to address the hardships and dangers immigrants have posed to Zamora. It continues to bring to as many people as possible.
Told from the perspective of Zamora’s 9-year-old self, the book details his journey from the small town of El Salvador where he lived with his grandparents to Guatemala, Mexico and Arizona. It’s a harrowing, often heartbreaking tale of erratic boat trips, run-ins with corrupt border guards, and dry, desperate days in the Sonoran Desert. A lack of awareness of real danger allows for moments of humor, camaraderie, and even joy.
After hours of walking through the desert, Zamora’s younger self can’t help but marvel at what he sees. Cacti look “like big pineapples with thorns” and trees look “like giant people looking at us.” He names his favorite plants. He notices that the stars are twinkling. “Why do they blink like that? Can they see the dirt under our feet? Like an old newspaper. Crumpled. Chew. Like walking on egg shells. Gallons of water in people’s hands. Slosh. We’re walking again.”
On how he dealt with the dangers of the journey, he said he “had to deal with fear somehow”, adding, “It’s about finding beauty in the scenery, telling jokes, and really loving food.” becomes your new hierarchy of pleasure. I wanted to respect that aspect.”
The narrator as Zamora’s witness exposes the inappropriateness of the term “unaccompanied minor”. Here we are, a very vulnerable boy, far from his family, experiencing the wider world for the first time. His protection, and ultimately his survival, comes only thanks to the risks taken by the temporary families of strangers he meets along the way.
“I don’t expect the people in this book to read it. But my dream scenario is that they open it up and just see the dedication page,” Zamora said.
“Solito” concludes with a final march through the desert and a reunion with Zamora’s parents after years of separation. His father left El Salvador in 1991, fleeing the civil war, and his mother joined him four years later. But growing up in Northern California, Zamora found his immigrant life had its own challenges, even after spending time with his family. He said he bottled up his past, assimilating to the point that his best friend didn’t know he was from another country.
He was a bad student “behaviorally, not academically,” he said.
Due to his immigration status, Zamora was unable to visit El Salvador during his high school years, but the country spoke to him. He came across the work of Roque Dalton, a Salvadoran poet and activist who wrote unflinchingly about oppression, class struggle, freedom and love. He found the spoken words of Leticia Hernandez Linares, a Salvadoran-American poet. He began to realize that he had a voice, and was moved by Toni Morrison’s exhortation, “If the book you want to read isn’t written, you must write it.”
“Everyone talks about that quote, but it’s a great quote!” Zamora said. “And reading Roque Dalton made me realize that no Salvadoran immigrant has written poetry and lived that experience. It opened up a whole new world.”
During high school, Zamora interned at 826 Valencia. This is a non-profit writing organization for young people founded by Dave Eggers and his Nínive Calegari in San Francisco. Zamora recalls meeting Eggers. Eggers was “very normal, down to earth, and gave me a completely different idea of what it means to be a ‘writer’.” As part of his internship, he was mentored by a local poet and tried his hand at serious writing for the first time.
The effort paid off. Zamora has held writing fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. Her 2017 Copper her debut poetry collection Unaccompanied, published by Her Canyon Her Press, won Northern California Book Her Awards and Kate Her Tufts Her Discovery Her Awards Finalist . Eggers called him “the essential American voice”.
When Zamora returned to 826 Valencia as a guest instructor for the summer program, the students “really listened to someone who reflected their background,” said Vita Nazarian, executive director of 826 Valencia. “It was very inspiring for them. He was giving back.”
Expression continues to be an important theme in Zamora’s work. In “Solito” and his poems, Zamora intersperses sentences with Spanish punctuation and caliche, or Salvadoran slang.
Children and teenagers who now migrate to the United States are “more likely to see themselves on the page than I am because of my job,” he said.
Zamora also began to engage more directly with her past. After moving to Tucson, Arizona, considering the fact that within a short drive of his home he could see the desert hills he walked across as a child, he decided to start a career at an immigrant aid organization working for Salvavision. I started volunteering. The desert corridor south of the city is a focal point for border crossings, deportations, and cartel activity. According to official statistics, more than 125 of his bodies have been found in the area this year alone.
The organization recently opened an immigrant resource center in Sassave, Sonora, a small border town about 70 miles from Tucson. Zamora spent the night on the streets when she was 9 years old. During the pandemic, deportations to towns surged.
“It’s a crime to send people there,” said Salvavision managing director Dora Rodriguez. “There are no public transport, hospitals or shelters, even for locals.”
The imminent risk of migration has faded, at least for Zamora. With his visa, he can live without worrying about being “hit by a border patrol car.” However, he continues to reconcile the conflicting feelings of a Salvadoran child living in the United States.
He said he recognizes the opportunities he has had in this country. But he also said that given the U.S.’s heavy involvement in the country’s civil war, which raged from 1980 to 1992, and the deportation of gang members to devastated El Salvador after the war ended, the U.S. government The realities that drive Salvadorans to migrate in the first place: gang violence, political instability, and lack of economic opportunity.
“Even under a right-wing government in the United States, there are more possibilities than any government in my country. That’s why people come here,” Zamora said. “Politics is secondary. It’s a matter of life or death.
Meanwhile, Zamora continues to heal, but has yet to talk much with his parents about what happened in his childhood. I couldn’t get past the first chapter after seeing what I went through trying to get through. Addressing his parents in his book acknowledgments, Zamora wrote, “I have forgiven you for so long, and I hope they do not sin.”
Most of all, Zamora says, it takes willpower to face trauma.
“A nine-year-old me was always following me like a shadow. “I’m a superhero.”