Solito: A Memoir

by Javier Zamora (Hogarth 2022)

In 1999, when Javier Zamora was nine years old, his grandparents in El Salvador and his parents in California set him on the trip of a lifetime: a clandestine journey through El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and the United States with the aim of smuggling him over the border so that he could join his parents. Entrusting him to a coyote and a fellow villager, they did not know where he was for the seven weeks it took to reach the Mexico-US border (“La Linea”) and cross it three times (“la tercera es la vencida“). As one of the many unaccompanied minors who illegally cross into the United States, Zamora describes what transpired, the people he met and traveled with and was guided by, the challenges and difficulties he encountered (boredom, danger, heat, cold, dehydration, filth, killer cacti. . .) as well as the new “family” he traveled with: Patricia and her daughter Carla, and Chino, their neighbor. They took care of him as if he were really one of them (and writing the book is one of the ways he is trying to find them). The coyotes who led them on their journey–there were four main ones–were, on the whole, professionals who made sure that all of their charges kept up with the sometimes grueling pace. Young Javier did not always trust them, but in the end, they did reunite him with his parents.

Zamora, a published poet, has an extraordinary personal memory, or else he fictionalized a lot of the story. He remembers specific sights, sounds, smells, tastes, feelings, conversations, thoughts. He says his therapist helped him to write the book. Maybe he relived some of his experiences through hypnosis. In any case, he kept it buried inside him for 25 years and did not really begin to process his emotions regarding his migration and the effects it had on him until he began writing poetry as a young adult.

Interestingly, although the book is mostly written in English, questions and exclamations are punctuated in Spanish throughout (e.g., “You’re still here, ¿no?” and “¡Hide!”). Some Spanish words, like también, are regularly inserted into the English sentences. And I think there’s a lot of Central American slang, which Google Translate mostly failed to translate for me. I would have appreciated a glossary, but not knowing the meaning of each word did not affect my understanding of the book. Differences in vocabulary between Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Mexican Spanishes are important; in Mexico, the Central American migrants must pretend to be Mexican, which is mostly accomplished by keeping their mouths shut and letting the coyotes talk for them. These linguistic details were very interesting for me.

The next time I hear about unaccompanied minors crossing the border, I will remember that each child is an individual with his or her own story. Javier Zamora writes, “I never found out what happened to Chele, or to any of the countless others who were with me. I fear they died in the Sonoran Desert. This book is for them and for every immigrant who has crossed, who has tried to, who is crossing right now, and who will keep trying.”

Cloud Cuckoo Land

by Anthony Doerr (Simon & Schuster, 2021)

This unusual novel alternates among the points of view of different people living in different times and places. Konstance is traveling through space towards a distant planet with her parents, other people who have volunteered for this expedition, and Sybil, an AI being who seems to know and control everything. Zeno Ninis lives in Lakeport, Idaho, as does Seymour Stuhlman. Anna is a Greek orphan living inside the walls of 15th-century Christian Constantinople. Finally, Omeir is a Bulgarian Muslim forced to join the Sultan’s invading army on its march toward the City. All these disparate souls are connected by an ancient Greek manuscript by Antonius Diogenes that tells the story of the shepherd Aethon and his misadventures as a donkey, a fish, and a crow as he tries to find a magical city in the sky (“Cloud Cuckoo Land”). Their stories are essentially separate, but eventually, their lives become entwined.

Many themes run through the book. One is the challenge of translating a dead language into a living one (Zeno learns Ancient Greek from a fellow prisoner of war in North Korea; he then translates the surviving bits and pieces of Aethon’s story and turns it into a play to be presented by five fifth-graders in the Lakeport public library.) Another is the importance of libraries (and books and stories) in our lives, as well as their vulnerability. (Konstance has access to a magical library on board the Argos as it hurtles through outer space; Zeno and the five children are rehearsing the play in the Lakeport Library when Seymour attempts to blow it up in an effort to stop the development of a forest that he treasures; Anna finds the damaged manuscript of Cloud Cuckoo Land in the library of a ruined priory.) Yet another is the search for paradise contrasted with the imperfect beauty of the Earth as it is; is it preferable to have a clear view of our world with all its faults and human wickedness, or to erase the evidence of anything negative in our history? And there is love: the love of Zeno for his fellow soldier Rex; the love of Omeir for his bullocks, Moonlight and Tree, and later for Anna; the love of Anna for her sister Maria; of Konstance for her parents; of Seymour for the forest habitat and the Great Grey Owl that he calls Trustyfriend. There is a lot to think about.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, so I will stop here. The book spent many weeks on the Washington Post‘s best-seller list, and rightly so. Although it was a bit of a challenge to get “into” the stories, by the end I couldn’t put it down.