Memoir chosen as 2024 Reading Across Rhode Island book highlights immigration, refugee experience

The bus rolls to a stop. Javier Zamora’s companions pretend to sleep. But he is alert and hears the heavy boots of soldiers walking through the aisle checking documents to determine if passengers are Mexican or “mojados,” a derogatory term for migrants. They check Zamora’s fake papers and move on, but just when the worst seems to have passed, he hears the voice of an older woman behind him.

“¡Take them! They are not Mexican. I am Mexican,” the woman tells the soldiers.

“¿Who, señora?” asks one.

“Them. Ask. Ask them. You’ll hear,” she says.

“You. You. And you. Outside. Now.”

Minutes later, Zamora and his companions are kneeling on the ground next to the road. Is this the end of the road for them?

Zamora recounts this story in “Solito,” his deeply-moving 2022 memoir tracing his journey as an unaccompanied minor from El Salvador to the United State at the age of 9 in 1999. Since then, the number of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border has risen to record levels. The crossing is also the deadliest among migration routes in the world, according to the United Nations’ migration arm. In 2023, 32 children died along the U.S.-Mexico border, the highest casualty count on record, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.

The Rhode Island Center for the Book has picked “Solito” as the 2024 Reading Across Rhode Island title for its “One Book, One State” community reading program. Each year since 2003, the nonprofit center funded by grants and donations has chosen one book to encourage Rhode Islanders to read, distributing thousands of copies for free to libraries and high schools. The center also prepares book club kits with 10 copies of the book, a resource guide and discussion questions that community and private book groups can borrow.

This year’s program will kick off with a panel discussion at the State House Library on Feb. 3. The event will feature Omar Bah, founder and director of the Refugee Dream Center, a Providence local nonprofit. Zamora, who lives in Tucson, Arizona, is scheduled to visit Rhode Island April 11 for an event at Salve Regina University in Newport, home to the The Rhode Island Center for the Book.

“We are hoping this selection will encourage Rhode Islanders to think about how we welcome immigrants and refugees to our state,” Kate Lentz, director of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, said via email.

“Solito” was one of about 40 books that were nominated for this year’s reading program. A committee that includes teachers, librarians, booksellers and local authors vets the submissions and picks “a book that speaks to a current time and a conversation happening in our state,” Lentz said. 

Last year’s pick was “True Biz,” a novel about a boarding school for deaf students by Sara Novic.

In a recent Zoom interview, Zamora said he has been amazed by the reception “Solito” has received. 

“I honestly didn’t expect people to care about this book,” Zamora said.

He admits he was jaded by the indifference he has seen people show toward migrants and their plight, noting how deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border have spiked in recent years. But the book has received a warm reception and was a New York Times bestseller. Perhaps what surprised him most was that Jenna Hager Bush, daughter of former President George W. Bush, picked “Solito” for her book reading club.

Zamora’s story is told through the eyes of himself as a child. He invites readers to step into his world and experience the emotions — from fear to joy, heartbreak and relief — he lived through as a boy. Telling the story from a 9-year-old’s perspective allows him to break through people’s prejudices. 

“We lower our guards when it’s like a child telling you that story,” Zamora said.

“Solito” is a fast-moving, enthralling read. A bus ride leads to a shelter, then a bumpy boat ride, more bus rides, shelters, police checkpoints and meetings with coyotes, and finally a grueling trek across a desert punctuated by encounters with American border patrol. Zamora is a poet, and his skill with the written word is evident. “Solito” is a multisensory experience, full of sights, smells and sounds: jackets redolent of dust and dry grass, gallons of water sloshing inside backpacks and mountains tinged orange by the setting sun. He also adroitly mixes Spanish and English, freely employing Salvadoreñismos (Salvadoran slang), which may feel foreign to a monolingual reader but to a bilingual reader—especially from Central America—his words feel like visiting home.

But the characters carry the story along in “Solito.” Zamora’s cast includes his doting twenty-something year-old aunt Mali, his curmudgeonous but sentimental grandfather, his travel companions Chino, Patricia and Carla and a colorful crew of coyotes and polleros (smugglers) who steal them across borders. Zamora presents their choices and actions without moral judgment, laying bare people’s humanity. He said he wants to “remind people that everybody’s human.” 

Zamora released “Unaccompanied,” a collection of poems about his experiences as a migrant, in 2017. He said he has been a writer since he can remember. He reckons he was 4 years old when he wrote his first letter to his father, who had migrated to the U.S. when Zamora was a year old. He credits a visiting poet to his high school with reintroducing him to the works of Pablo Neruda, a Chilean poet and Noble laureate, opening the world of Spanish-English poetry to him. 

“I’m still using the act of writing in order to find out who I am and who my people are,” Zamora said.

Zamora is bipartisan in his criticism of the government’s treatment of migrants and remains skeptical whether the U.S. will be able to find a more humane system of immigration. But “Solito” may be the right place to start if someone wants to understand the stories of migrants and the difficult choices they make.

“I think reading more books is part of the conversation of changing the narratives,” Zamora said.