First Friday Rec: Solito

Title: Solito
Author: Javier Zamora
Genre: Memoir
Pages: 384
Publication Date: October 11, 2022
StoryGraph” Moods: Emotional, Tense, Sad
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: Book Club
Other Books by Zamora: Unaccompanied
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

Description: A nine-year-old boy takes a three-thousand-mile journey from El Salvador to join his parents in the U.S. – traveling through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonora Desert.

Why I recommend this book:

There have been many other stories written about the border – but this one is written by someone who actually made the journey – not someone writing about others who have or by someone who was a patrol agent at the border. This should be required reading because there are so many people that have no clue what someone goes through that forces them to leave their home or what that journey is actually like. This book is a revelation and an education.

In addition to that, it is beautifully written (which should not be surprising when you learn that Zamora is also a poet). It is intense at moments, heartbreaking at others. It’s gripping – I could not put it down (if I remember right, I read it in three days). We get to see sweet moments of a child – like when he names the plants of the desert (Spikeys. Fuzzies. Lonelies.), and we get to experience tense moments where a simple misused word (using the El Salvadoran/Spanish word for straw rather than the Mexican/Spanish) causes fear that they may be found out. (Even knowing he makes it across safely, as he is currently in the states with this book published, doesn’t cut the tension.)

Something missing?

I honestly can say that as I read, I didn’t feel as though anything was left out. I wasn’t even finished with it when I started telling everyone who would listen that they MUST read this book.

“All of the colors are amazing—some still linger at the edges of the sky, but when sunrise was at its peak, it felt like we were walking in a painting. Pinks, oranges, reds, purples, yellows, mixing together like watercolors. I thought I liked sunsets most, but I think I like sunrises better.” ~ Javier Zamora