Mini Review of “Enrique’s Journey”
I have always hated to be the barer of bad news, however, sometimes I feel like it is important to realize what's happening around us, be it good or bad. That being said, I need to alert people to the horrors, atrocity's and perilous journeys that migrants coming north face.
And to do that I want to look specifically at a book, nay, not a book, a masterpiece by Sonia Nazario. It's called Enrique's Journey. It's a real life telling of a journey made by a boy to find his mother up North (The U.S.). He left his siblings, his grandmother and many others to make his journey. Wrought with danger,
This is the type of story you would question. The type of story where hearing the details you would be in absolute disbelief of the things that happened. Rape, group rape, police brutality, being used, starvation, bruising, sleeping on cardboard, losing money and belongings to bandits. As well as a host of other evils.
Some may say that this story is a falsified account. But that simply is not the case. The magnificence of this novel and trueness of it all is apparent. Not only for the fact that Sonia Nazario is a Pulitzer, prize winning journalist. Her reputation supersedes her. On top of that, she took many photographs from her trip and took so many testimony’s from individuals on their way North.
I know that I can’t and will not ever be able to truly do justice to this work and Nazario’s incredible novel. What I can do is encourage you to read this book and to realize the burden individuals from Central and South America, who make this trek, experience. You cannot and will not even begin to understand the things these individuals experienced. But this book is a step in the right direction.
“In 2013, approximately 3.2 million Central American immigrants resided in the United States—the majority from the so-called Northern Triangle formed by El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—representing 7 percent of the country’s 41.3 million immigrants” (MPI “Central American Immigrants in the United States”). These statistics are important to recognize. It’s also important to realize that the statistic since then has grown significantly.
A critique of this writing comes directly from my classmates in my Sociology of Migration course. Saying that Nazario could have delved deeper into how these situations happened. Explaining what in government policy, and in the world spurred people to migrate North. And maybe what encouraged them to willingly take such a dangerous, could be deadly, trip. What readers have to decide for themselves is whether this work should have included this, or if it is whole as simply a telling of these stories. I personally agree with some of the students in the class in the fact that it would have been a better telling if those types of things had been included.
To end my specific critiques of this novel I would like to just mention the odd type of limited 3rd person narrative that Nazario uses. It is done well and grammatically correct. But I believe this this is the least useful of all types of 1st or 3rd person writing. That being said, she uses this way well, and still makes it a wonderful read. It takes a minute to completely get used to it, but when you do it’s easy to get lost in the storytelling.
As a final thought I’d like to just exclaim that this writing is something every American could defiantly benefit from. To look at Enrique’s story, his heritage, his experience, and the reactions of people through his journey is an important thing for American’s to know.
The following are pictures from Enrique's Journey:
I've also included a link to this book on Amazon.com
