Earth Day

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Book Report: Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How it Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions

 

    Each child comes from a different place, a separate life, a distinct set of experiences, but their stories usually follow the same predictable, fucked-up plot.

Which goes more or less as follows:  Children leave their homes with a coyote.  They cross Mexico in the hands of this coyote, riding La Bestia.  They try not to fall into the hands of rapists, corrupt policemen, murderous solders, and drug gangs who might enslave them in poppy or marijuana fields, if they don't shoot them in the head and mass-bury them.  If something goes wrong, and something happens to a child, the coyote is not held accountable.  In fact, no one is ever held accountable. The children who make it all the way to the U.S. border turn themselves in to Border Patrol officers and are formally detained.  (Often by officers who say things like "Speak English!  Now you're in America!")  They are then placed in the icebox.  And, later, in a temporary shelter.  There they must start looking for their parents--if they have parents--or for relatives who will sponsor them.  Later, they are sent to wherever their sponsor lives.  And finally, they have to appear in court, where they can defend themselves against deportation--if they have a lawyer.


I began reading this text as a part of the No Longer a Stranger working group that is part of Interfaith Action in Southwest Michigan.  The discussion of the text will happen tonight at 6:00 p.m.  If you want the info to be a part of that discussion, please contact me, mmulberry@gmail.com.  I will get you the critical Zoom information.   Below the information I am providing for the discussion is my book report.  

I look forward to this discussion with Professor Reinoza leading us.

On September 15th at 6pm, Interfaith Action of SW Michigan will host a community discussion via Zoom on Valeria Luiselli’s book "Tell Me How It Ends”.   The book discussion is part of the organization’s six month series on migration. 

The book “Tell Me How It Ends” is available through local county libraries and is the winner of a 2018 American Book Award and was a Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.  The book is structured around the forty questions Luiselli asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation. Tell Me How It Ends humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.
 
The book discussion will be led by Tatiana Reinoza, a resident of Stevensville. She  is an assistant professor of Latinx art in the Department of Art, Art History & Design at the University of Notre Dame. She specializes in the history of printmaking in Latinx communities in the United States with an emphasis on the themes of immigration, race, and histories of colonialism. Her own journey as an immigrant from El Salvador and interdisciplinary training in the fields of ethnic studies and art history have shaped her intellectual formation. 
 
Reinoza earned her PhD at the University of Texas at Austin, and subsequently joined the Society of Fellows at Dartmouth College for a postdoctoral fellowship prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame. Professor Reinoza is a member of the Board of Directors of Interfaith Action and is active in the No Longer a Stranger Working Group of Interfaith Action.

Although this is a short text, its autobiographical nature makes it powerful.  Luiselli relates her work as an interpreter in New York City's interviewing children.   Her template is the questionnaire that begins with, "Why did you come to the United States?"  It ends with the question posed by one of her children, "Tell me how it ends?"  

Both questions have a painful irony that have no easy answers.  How do you tell your own children the twisted evil of a system requires children to fit into a box to remain in our country and remain safe from the danger they just fled.   How do we share with our children the pain, angst, and torture so many of these immigrant children have already been through? 

This is a great book for relating some of the ever-present pain found along one part of the immigration system.  Contrary to what some political officials and media personalities put forward, the book also relates that the United States is not the "open door" to immigrants and refugees they make it out to be.  Luiselli makes that clear with process she knows about the system and by relating the tragic narratives she experienced.   If we are serious about the pain found deep in the heart of God, we know change is required. 

Where the book falls short, and it doesn't pretend to be a thoroughgoing discussion, is not detailing the reasons behind racist, oppressive immigration system we have.  Our system is not broken.  It is intentionally punishing the people we consider less than human.  Would that our country not have violent solutions in other areas of our law enforcement, we might say that the system is broken.  We cannot.  

This is the third book I have read recently that asks the question what it means to be a human being or human.  In a nation that has declared corporations to be human beings (with a right to have rights), we have consistently supported a system that gives over our lives to profits, greed, and violence that corporate America regularly pours into our ecosystems.  What we need is an augmentation of "human beings" that reaches out into the biosphere that provides life for humans.

My prayer is that a book like this moves us to go deeper to root out an intentionally evil, racist, and violent system intended to extract labor and wealth from Latin America while then doubly punishing the people for declaring themselves to be human beings by fleeing unjust laws, systems, and practices.  We are often at the root of the push-pull dynamic that creates immigrants and refugees.  We then punish those very same immigrants and refugees for responding in ways to seek out something beyond the violence.

Tell me how it ends?  For these children, the story too often ends with their abuse, torture, and death.  

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