It would take a hard heart not to fall in love with nine-year-old Javier Zamora, with his head full of superheroes, love, and deep concerns about bodily functions. How, for example, can he trust modern plumbing, instead of the outhouse behind his grandparents’ home in El Salvador? What will keep him from being flushed down the toilet and into the ocean?
At the beginning of this memoir, he has a seemingly comfortable life in the tiny village of La Herradura, with his grandparents, aunt, and cousin. But he misses his parents, who immigrated to the United States to escape the political violence and gangs of their home country. In his dreams, Javier flies like Superman and greets his parents in California at their front door. A superhero could then fly back home.
When Javier turns nine, Don Dago, the coyote who helped his mother successfully cross the Mexican border thinks he is old enough to make the harrowing journey to reunite with his parents. But he is not a superhero. He’s just a little boy.
Zamora, who was in his late 20s when he began writing the book, tells the story from the perspective of his nine-year-old self, with the naivete and confusion of a child who had to put his life in the hands of people he didn’t even know and embark on a trek that many others did not survive.
In April 1999, he sets out for what he and his family expect to be a two-week trip. Instead, it stretches to nine weeks, as things begin to go wrong immediately, with unexplained delays, new coyotes coming and going, and confusing route changes. His grandfather goes with him for the first two weeks of the trip, along with a group of others fleeing the country.
After his grandfather leaves, Javier has no way to contact his family in El Salvador or in California. For seven weeks, his parents and grandparents have no idea where he is, or if he is even alive.
He forms a family bond with a young mother, Patricia (also his mother’s name), her young daughter Carla, and Chino, a tattooed teenager escaping gang life. In the book’s dedication, he says he owes his life to them. In searing details, he shows this to be true.
Zamora is at heart a poet, and he brings us along on his journey with writing so clear and poignant we hear, smell, see, taste, and feel with him. The hot and smelly hotel rooms full of people who cannot leave or even open the windows, the delight of his first taco, the feel of water when he can finally wash the sand and sweat away in a shower, the glint of a gun aimed his way.
He’s a shy bookish boy, self-conscious about his weight and nervous about everything from the size of his penis to the cleanliness of his underwear and his crush on Carla. That he has to go through this experience for his own safety is appalling. That he is judged for it is heartless.
When Zamora was 18, he began to write poetry about his journey, at the suggestion of his therapist. He wrote from the perspective of a coyote in “Looking at a Coyote.” He shared his love for, but distrust of, his home country in “El Salvador,” the home that can never be home again. In “Citizenship,” he watches others who look like him but who can cross the border easily and wonders how they are different from him. In “Second Attempt Crossing” he writes about Chino, who was like a life-saving older brother on the journey, but whose fate is uncertain in the United States. The poems stand beautifully on their own but offer heartbreaking depth if read after finishing this memoir.
Zamora earned citizenship through an Employment-Based Extraordinary Ability visa (EB-1), sometimes called a genius visa, and then a green card because of his writing. And, though grateful, he says refugees should not have to be geniuses to come to the United States. They should be accepted just because they are humans.
The book’s cover is a work of art in itself—an outline of a downcast boy filled with an image of the Mexican desert. The title—Solito, which means solitary—is placed above the image in a sea of white. The austerity shows how alone this dear little boy felt. The book ends on a poetic note—showing us a hint of his reunion with his parents but leaving the details for our imaginations. Our group we had one recommendation—that Zamora write a second book about his life in this country, his fraught reunion with his parents, and the reality of living in a country that will never be home.
— Patricia Prijatel
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