Border Child

Border Child
Author: Michel Stone
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2017-04-04
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0385541651

For Héctor and Lilia, pursuit of the American Dream became every parent's worst fear when their infant daughter vanished as they crossed from Mexico to the United States—now they must try to get her back. With great empathy and a keen awareness of current events, Michel Stone delivers a novel of surpassing sensitivity and heart. Young lovers Héctor and Lilia dreamed of a brighter future for their family in the United States. Héctor left Mexico first, to secure work and housing, but when Lilia, desperate to be with Héctor, impetuously crossed the border with their infant daughter, Alejandra, mother and child were separated. Alejandra disappeared. Now, four years later, the family has a chance to reunite, but the trauma of the past may well be permanent. Back in their sleepy hometown of Oaxaca, the couple enjoys a semblance of normal life, with a toddler son and another baby on the way. Then they receive an unexpected tip that might lead them to Alejandra, and both agree they must seize this chance, whatever the cost. Working increasingly illegal jobs to earn money for his journey north, Héctor seeks more information about his long-absent daughter. Meanwhile, a bedridden Lilia awaits the birth of their third child, but cannot keep herself from reliving the worst mistakes of her past. In luminous, compassionate prose, Michel Stone drops readers into the whirlwind of the contemporary immigrant experience, where a marriage is strained to the breaking point by the consequences of wanting more for the next generation.

By the Lake of Sleeping Children

By the Lake of Sleeping Children
Author: Luis Urrea
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 208
Release: 1996-09-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0385484194

By the Lake of Sleeping Children explores the post-NAFTA and Proposition 187 border purgatory of garbage pickers and dump dwellers, gawking tourists, and relief workers, fearsome coyotes, and their desperate clientele. In 16 indelible portraits, Urrea illuminates the horrors and the simple joys of people trapped between the two worlds of Mexico and the United States—and ignored by both. The result is a startling and memorable work of first-person reportage.

Border Child

Border Child
Author: Michel Stone
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525563547

Young lovers Héctor and Lilia dream of a brighter future in the United States, but their dream turns to a nightmare when their infant daughter vanishes during the crossing from Mexico. Four years later, back in their hometown of Oaxaca, the couple have a toddler son and another baby on the way when they receive a tip that might lead to their long-lost daughter. Héctor works illegal jobs to earn money for the journey north, and a bedridden Lilia awaits the birth of their third child while obsessively reliving the worst mistakes of her past. Michel Stone gives us a raw and heart-wrenching portrait of a family strained to the breaking point by the unexpected consequences of their hopes for a better life.

They Call Me Güero

They Call Me Güero
Author: David Bowles
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 113
Release: 2021-08-24
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 0593462556

An award-winning novel in verse about a boy who navigates the start of seventh grade and life growing up on the border the only way that feels right—through poetry. They call him Güero because of his red hair, pale skin, and freckles. Sometimes people only go off of what they see. Like the Mexican boxer Canelo Álvarez, twelve-year-old Güero is puro mexicano. He feels at home on both sides of the river, speaking Spanish or English. Güero is also a reader, gamer, and musician who runs with a squad of misfits called Los Bobbys. Together, they joke around and talk about their expanding world, which now includes girls. (Don’t cross Joanna—she's tough as nails.) Güero faces the start of seventh grade with heart and smarts, his family’s traditions, and his trusty accordion. And when life gets tough for this Mexican American border kid, he knows what to do: He writes poetry. Honoring multiple poetic traditions, They Call Me Güero is a classic in the making and the recipient of a Pura Belpré Honor, a Tomás Rivera Mexican American Children's Book Award, a Claudia Lewis Award for Excellence in Poetry, and a Walter Dean Myers Honor.

Children at the Border

Children at the Border
Author: Jo-Anne Wilson-Keenan
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2021-05-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1476685428

The Trump administration violated the rights of migrant children who fled brutal violence in the Northern Triangle of Central America. Their rights are human rights. This book explores the administration's policies and practices of family separation at the U.S. southern border and its confinement of migrant children that, in some cases, experts describe as torture. Specific connections are made between harmful actions on the part of government officials and agencies, and provisions that protect against them in The Convention on the Rights of the Child and four other UN conventions. Awareness of the violations and the safeguards afforded to children may help preserve children's human rights. The book also examines efforts of humanitarian organizations, courts, and legislators to reclaim and defend migrant children's rights. The author's research includes information from international and national government documents, news reports, and interviews and stories that resulted from networking with advocates in both Arizona and Mexico. The young asylum seekers were called "criminals" and "not-innocent" by the President. However, his narrative is contradicted by vignettes that describe children's own experiences and beliefs and by photographs of them taken by advocates in Arizona and by the author in shelters in Mexico where families await asylum.

The Children of NAFTA

The Children of NAFTA
Author: David Bacon
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2004-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520237781

Publisher Description

Unaccompanied

Unaccompanied
Author: Javier Zamora
Publisher: Copper Canyon Press
Total Pages: 118
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1619321777

New York Times Bestselling Author of Solito "Every line resonates with a wind that crosses oceans."—Jamaal May "Zamora's work is real life turned into myth and myth made real life." —Glappitnova Javier Zamora was nine years old when he traveled unaccompanied 4,000 miles, across multiple borders, from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with his parents. This dramatic and hope-filled poetry debut humanizes the highly charged and polarizing rhetoric of border-crossing; assesses borderland politics, race, and immigration on a profoundly personal level; and simultaneously remembers and imagines a birth country that's been left behind. Through an unflinching gaze, plainspoken diction, and a combination of Spanish and English, Unaccompanied crosses rugged terrain where families are lost and reunited, coyotes lead migrants astray, and "the thin white man let us drink from a hose / while pointing his shotgun." From "Let Me Try Again": He knew we weren't Mexican. He must've remembered his family coming over the border, or the border coming over them, because he drove us to the border and told us next time, rest at least five days, don't trust anyone calling themselves coyotes, bring more tortillas, sardines, Alhambra. He knew we would try again. And again—like everyone does. Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. He earned a BA at UC-Berkeley, an MFA at New York University, and is a 2016–2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Divided by Borders

Divided by Borders
Author: Joanna Dreby
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2010-02-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520945832

Since 2000, approximately 440,000 Mexicans have migrated to the United States every year. Tens of thousands have left children behind in Mexico to do so. For these parents, migration is a sacrifice. What do parents expect to accomplish by dividing their families across borders? How do families manage when they are living apart? More importantly, do parents' relocations yield the intended results? Probing the experiences of migrant parents, children in Mexico, and their caregivers, Joanna Dreby offers an up-close and personal account of the lives of families divided by borders. What she finds is that the difficulties endured by transnational families make it nearly impossible for parents' sacrifices to result in the benefits they expect. Yet, paradoxically, these hardships reinforce family members' commitments to each other. A story both of adversity and the intensity of family ties, Divided by Borders is an engaging and insightful investigation of the ways Mexican families struggle and ultimately persevere in a global economy.

Separated by the Border

Separated by the Border
Author: Gena Thomas
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2019-10-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0830857907

Gena Thomas tells the story of five-year-old Julia, whose harrowing journey with her mother from Honduras to the United States took her from cargo trailer to detention center to foster care. Weaving together the stories of birth mother and foster mother, this book shows the human face of the immigrant and refugee, the challenges of the immigration and foster care systems, and the tenacious power of motherly love.

Finding Fernanda

Finding Fernanda
Author: Erin Siegal
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2012-05-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0807001856

The dramatic story of how an American housewife discovered that the Guatemalan child she was about to adopt had been stolen from her birth mother Over the last decade, nearly 200,000 children have been adopted into the United States, 25,000 of whom came from Guatemala. Finding Fernanda, a dramatic true story paired with investigative reporting, tells the side-by-side tales of an American woman who adopted a two-year-old girl from Guatemala and the birth mother whose two children were stolen from her. Each woman gradually comes to realize her role in what was one of Guatemala’s most profitable black-market industries: the buying and selling of children for international adoption. Finding Fernanda is an overdue, unprecedented look at adoption corruption—and a poignant, riveting human story about the power of hope, faith, and determination.