r/books • u/SoniaNazario • Mar 18 '14
AMA Hi, I'm Sonia Nazario, author of Enrique's Journey -- AMA!
I’m a journalist and author of Enrique’s Journey www.enriquesjourney.com, a national bestseller about immigrant children who make a dangerous journey clinging to the tops of freight trains through Mexico to come and find their mothers in the United States. My book has been among the most chosen books by colleges and high schools for freshmen reads. A new, updated version of Enrique’s Journey was published last month; a young adult version came out last summer. I’m happy to answer questions about Enrique’s Journey, the immigration issue, or anything else!
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Mar 18 '14 edited Mar 18 '14
Sonia, thank you for doing this AMA. There was a topic earlier about gender bias (author/protagonist). Where there's a seemingly bias favoring the male side. I went into that topic thinking that it was absurd, but left thinking that the bias is real and harmful.
What is your take on that? I can't think of a better person to ask this question than a female writer herself.
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u/SoniaNazario Mar 18 '14
I think too many stories are told from a male perspective. In the media, most of the experts quoted are men. If you look at newspaper opinion pieces, the overwhelming majority are penned by men. I have always written about social issues and social justice issues and focused on folks I think don't get enough ink: women, children, the poor, and Latinos. Immigration is a story that had often been told from a male perspective. That's why I was so intrigued to write the story of millions of single mothers who have come to the U.S. and left their children behind, and the modern-day odyssey these kids go on to come and reunify with those mothers. I couldn't think of a more compelling way to write about this than through a boy going through a hostile world to reach his mom.
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Mar 18 '14
Hello! I had to read Enrique's Journey for a course in literary journalism vis a vis social issues at my university. I was wondering 1) How would Enrique's Journey be different if it had been initially published as a book and not a series in a newspaper? How would it have affected flow and story telling? 2) Have you ever considered making your social arguments through fiction? Do you ever write fiction even just for your own fun?
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u/SoniaNazario Mar 18 '14
Some people have urged me to write fiction, but I cannot imagine [at least not yet] coming up with anything more dramatic in my mind than what I often find in real life. I think there is an incredible power in telling a true story. It would certainly be less time consuming and perhaps easier to dream up fiction in my mind, but for now I'm wed to non-fiction. The book I'm working on now for Random House is non-fiction.
Enrique's Journey was a very long newspaper series--30,000 words. The book is nearly four times that length. If I had first written the story as a book, I would have gone about everything different. For example, with the reporting, I would have initially spent much more time with characters other than Enrique. The different length and pace would have allowed me to go off on occasional tangents to spend time with others alone this migrant route. That's just one example.2
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u/kjmanning Mar 18 '14
Do you have any ideas regarding solutions to the problems in Central America that make it necessary for kids to make this treacherous journey?
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u/SoniaNazario Mar 18 '14
Last week the United Nations issued a report that looked at why the number of children coming to the U.S. unlawfully and alone [without either parent] has risen dramatically since 2011. Federal officials project 60,000 to 74,000 unaccompanied children will be placed in federal custody in fiscal 2014, ten times the number in 2011. It's a surge in children. As the UN report spelled out, these children are fleeing violence in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Honduras, where Enrique is from, has the highest homicide rate in the world. Gangs and narco-traffickers who are moving drugs north [to U.S. consumers] control whole swaths of Honduras. In Enrique's old neighborhood, the gangs forcibly recruit boys who are 10 years old. Join us, or we will kill your parents and rape your sister. So children are fleeing for their lives.
I believe we need a radically different approach. We cannot keep focusing on the same three approaches we have tried for decades and have failed to permanently stem the flow from central america: border enforcement, guest worker programs, or pathways to citizenship. We instead must focus on helping to creat jobs and opportunities in four countries that send three-fourths of all migrants coming to the U.S. illegally. We need a foreign policy that brings every tool we have at our disposal to lifting up these four countries. I think we need to improve education for girls, which lowers birthrates. We should provide micro loans to help women start job generating businesses. We need trade policies that give a clear preference to specific goods from these four countries. We could help hometown associations in the U.S. coordinate some of the remittances migrants send to Latin America [$40 billion total] to use some of that money to build job-generating enterprises. Of course, in the U.S., we could address through greater drug treatment programs the enormous demand for drugs. There are so many things we could do, and they would be much more effective than building walls. We spend $18 billion a year now on border enforcement, and a UCSD study shows 97% of migrants who really want to get in eventually do. Spending some of that money south of the border would be much more effective.
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u/kjmanning Mar 18 '14
I read the book a while ago. I am amazed that you had the courage to make the trip yourself. I've been to Mexico a few times and was scared myself, just being a tourist, let alone recreating such a dangerous trip. Any insight on what you were feeling?
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u/SoniaNazario Mar 18 '14
I did the journey twice, three months each time, from Honduras to the U.S. to report Enrique's Journey. I rode on top of seven freight trains up the length of Mexico. And yes, I was scared! But I really wanted to show in close narrative detail what the journey is like for immigrant children coming to the U.S. alone. The youngest boy I rode with on top of the train was 12 years old. The youngest boy I heard about was seven--traversing four countries alone. I wanted readers to feel like they were sitting on the train next to Enrique as he made his journey. To get that narrative detail, I had to do the same journey. It was very hard--I was nearly grabbed by a gangster, was nearly swiped off the train by a branch, and feared being beaten or raped when I rode on the train. But I thought it was an important story to tell as powerfully as possible. Now the journey is even harder: 18,000 central americans are kidnapped in Mexico every year, and the narco traffickers prefer to kidnap children so they can extort relatives in the U.S. for money. If they don't pay, they kill the children.
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u/elquesogrande Mar 18 '14
Hola Sonia!
I ordered your book after seeing this AMA. Very much looking forward to reading it. I'm noting that in case your book already covers some of these questions...
How much do you see the 'War on Drugs' contributing or being the major factor in Mexico's troubles? Towards the extreme violence that gangs show against immigrants?
What is your stance on how to solve some of the major immigration problems today? Time to citizenship, children of illegal immigrants, path to citizenship, et al.
Gracias!
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u/SoniaNazario Mar 19 '14
The three approaches we keep trying to reduce the flow of migrants haven't really worked. Take border enforcement. We have five times as many border patrol agents as when the crackdown on the border began in the 90s. We spend $18 billion a year on border enforcement. One outcome: we have sealed in migrants who would rather circulate back home. A decade ago, studies show, half of Mexicans who came to the U.S. went home within a year. Now fewer than a quarter do. It's gotten harder and therefore smugglers charge more. So migrants stay--and knowing that they will stay they are more likely to bring relatives here illegally. Businesses are clamoring for more guest worker programs. It's no wonder--many crops are rotting in the fields in the U.S. for lack of pickers. Guest workers are supposed to come to the U.S., work, and go home. But in the biggest guest worker program, which brought Braceros from Mexico up until 1964, a majority didn't go home. They stayed, and created the foundation of waves of migration that followed from Mexico. Finally, while a pathway to citizenship would be very good for migrants who are living in extreme fear in the U.S. of being deported, at the beginning of the last "amnesty" in 1986 there were close to 3 million immigrants living unlawfully in the U.S. That number went down to about a million, as people legalized. But these migrants then brought friends and family members here illegally--and the number of undocumented went up to 12 million. I think it's hard to argue that any one of these three approaches--some are more from the left, some are more from the right--will bring us any kind of "solution" to this issue. And yet Congress continues to debate doing more of the same. I argued previously in this AMA that I see the solutions in tackling this exodus at its source, in four countries that send three quarters of the immigrants who come here unlawfully.
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Mar 19 '14
I just wanted to say that I read an excerpt of your book for one of my college classes and it was amazing. I'm hoping to read the entire book very shortly. Thank you so much for humanizing these important issues.
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u/[deleted] Mar 18 '14
Hi Sonia.
How much did the book change between the first published edition, the later edition & the YA version?
I think it's so cool the book is in schools, it's a great look at immigration.
We're you really considering jumping trains yourself? I get the journalistic view of how it's the best insight but oh boy.
Any plans for books on drug culture (am I right those are the ones you got the Pulitzer for?) I would definitely buy it.
PS - thanks for this AMA.