{"id":33361,"date":"2017-08-12T21:32:38","date_gmt":"2017-08-13T01:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=33361"},"modified":"2017-08-12T21:32:38","modified_gmt":"2017-08-13T01:32:38","slug":"review-of-tell-me-how-it-ends-by-valeria-luiselli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=33361","title":{"rendered":"Review of Tell Me How It Ends, by Valeria Luiselli"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Tell Me How It Ends<\/p>\n

An Essay in Forty Questions<\/em><\/p>\n

by Valeria Luiselli<\/p>\n

Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2017. 119 pages.
\nStarred Review<\/p>\n

This little book is not pretentious, calling itself an \u201cessay\u201d rather than a \u201cbook\u201d \u2013 but it packs a punch.<\/p>\n

I was expecting forty short chapters. Instead there are four chapters of varying lengths. The questions of the title refer to the forty questions on the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants used in the federal immigration court in New York City where the author began working as a volunteer interpreter in 2015.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how she describes this work:<\/p>\n

My task there is a simple one: I interview children in court, following the intake questionnaire, and then translate their stories from Spanish to English.<\/p>\n

But nothing is ever that simple. I hear words, spoken in the mouths of children, threaded in complex narratives. They are delivered with hesitance, sometimes distrust, always with fear. I have to transform them into written words, succinct sentences, and barren terms. The children\u2019s stories are always shuffled, stuttered, always shattered beyond the repair of a narrative order. The problem with trying to tell their story is that it has no beginning, no middle, and no end.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I find I don\u2019t have the heart to quote excerpts from the stories in this book from the children the author met. I\u2019m left speechless. This book is eye-opening.<\/p>\n

One of the stories is that of a teenage boy who found the same gang he was fleeing in Tegucigalpa was active in Hempstead, New York. Members of the gang beat him up in Hempstead, and another gang offers him protection if he\u2019ll join them. He\u2019s resisting.<\/p>\n

She reflects on this story and on media reports about the child migrants coming from Central America:<\/p>\n

Between Hempstead and Tegucigalpa there is a long chain of causes and effects. Both cities can be drawn on the same map: the map of violence related to drug trafficking. This fact is ignored, however, by almost all of the official reports. The media wouldn\u2019t put Hempstead, a city in New York, on the same plane as one in Honduras. What a scandal! Official accounts in the United States \u2013 what circulates in the newspaper or on the radio, the message from Washington, and public opinion in general \u2013 almost always locate the dividing line between \u201ccivilization\u201d and \u201cbarbarity\u201d just below the Rio Grande\u2026.<\/p>\n

The attitude in the United States toward child migrants is not always blatantly negative, but generally speaking, it is based on a kind of misunderstanding or voluntary ignorance. Debate around the matter has persistently and cynically overlooked the causes of the exodus. When causes are discussed, the general consensus and underlying assumption seem to be that the origins are circumscribed to \u201csending\u201d countries and their many local problems. No one suggests that the causes are deeply embedded in our shared hemispheric history and are therefore not some distant problem in a foreign country that no one can locate on a map, but in fact a transnational problem that includes the United States \u2013 not as a distant observer or passive victim that must now deal with thousands of unwanted children arriving at the southern border, but rather as an active historical participant in the circumstances that generated that problem.<\/p>\n

The belief that the migration of all of those children is \u201ctheir\u201d (the southern barbarians\u2019) problem is often so deeply ingrained that \u201cwe\u201d (the northern civilization) feel exempt from offering any solution. The devastation of the social fabric in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other countries is often thought of as a Central American \u201cgang violence\u201d problem that must be kept on the far side of the border. There is little said, for example, of arms being trafficked from the United States into Mexico or Central America, legally or not; little mention of the fact that the consumption of drugs in the United States is what fundamentally fuels drug trafficking in the continent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s where she explains where the book got its title:<\/p>\n

The children who cross Mexico and arrive at the U.S. border are not \u201cimmigrants,\u201d not \u201cillegals,\u201d not merely \u201cundocumented minors.\u201d Those children are refugees of a war, and, as such, they should all have the right to asylum. But not all of them have it.<\/p>\n

Tell me how it ends, Mamma, my daughter asks me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Tell me what happens next.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I make up an ending, a happy one. But most of the time I just say:<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how it ends yet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is very possible that our policies in the United States and our actions as citizens will determine how these stories end. Which is a sobering thought.<\/p>\n

Highly recommended reading. It\u2019s not pleasant reading, but it is eye-opening and thought-provoking.<\/p>\n

coffeehousepress.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Nonfiction\/tell_me_how_it_ends.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Fairfax County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

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