New Immigration Book

ENRIQUE’S JOURNEY: The Story of a Boy’s Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother. By Sonia Nazario. Random House, 320 pp. $26.95

From a review in the Houston Chronicle

EACH year thousands of Hispanic immigrants enter the United States illegally to look for work. Recently, a new twist has been added to that
familiar story: Central American children making the perilous trek north in search of their most precious possession, their mothers.

They hop freight trains and travel alone, crossing the length of Mexico with few clothes and less money. Sometimes the train devours them, cutting off
arms, legs, hands. They suffer hunger, cold, thirst. Many are robbed, raped or killed. Gang members, police and immigration agents hunt them like prey.
But nothing can stop these children. If they fail, they try again and again.

“Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them,” writes Sonia Nazario in “Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy’s
Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother. “Each year, she writes, 48,000 children cross the U.S. border illegally in search of their mothers working
in the United States.

Poverty is so rampant in Honduras and El Salvador that it is almost impossible for single mothers to raise a family, Nazario explains. Seeking a way out, the women hire a coyote (a smuggler) to take them to “El Norte, “where, they have been told, jobs are plentiful. They pay a hefty price for this exchange. They leave their young ones behind and may not see them for years, if ever.

Nazario, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter with the Los Angeles Times, humanizes this story by focusing on one family. “Perhaps by looking at one immigrant – his strengths, his courage, his flaws – his humanity might help illuminate what too often has been a black-white discussion,” she writes.

Nazario goes beyond the call of duty to shed light on this issue. Having settled on Enrique, a teenage boy from Honduras, she retraces his journey from the moment he leaves home to the time he finds his mother. “I wanted to see and experience things as he had with the hope of describing them more fully,” she writes. With the cooperation of Mexican government officials, she makes the trip by herself, much as Enrique did a few weeks before. She hops freight trains and travels through 13 Mexican states, once almost falling down as a tree branch hits her face. Nazario gets off the train in northern Mexico, where Enrique did, and hitchhikes, as he did, on an 18-wheeler to the border town of Nuevo Laredo.

She spent six months traveling in Honduras, Mexico and the United States. Then she retraced Enrique’s journey again to collect more information and
corroborate his story. The result is an impressive piece of reporting – and a book that tells the harrowing and poignant story of a boy determined to find his mother.
***

The reporting is impressive, and the reporter makes every attempt to ensure it is accurate and honest. The writing, however, is not up to par with the reporting. For instance, when describing the commonplace problems of the poor, the prose falls flat and needs help.

Nazario ends with a discussion by immigration experts about whether it’s beneficial for the mothers to leave their children behind while they work in the United States. One expert concludes not. “In the end,” the woman explains, “you lose your kids.” But then she admits she doesn’t know what it’s like to starve.