The promise of family is what sustains a then-nine-year-old Javier Zamora on his journey to La USA from a village in El Salvador, that same promise is what gives fruition to his memoir Solito. Despite its title, Solito is just one story out of the hundreds of thousands of children from Central America that make the journey to the United States without family, but whose first-hand accounts go largely unheard of. Commonly referred to as “unaccompanied minors” by media coverage and political pundits, the poet challenges this very notion and forces you to move past the legalistic term through impeccable detail, rendering the grueling 3,000-mile journey in the most visceral of emotions.
The book begins with Zamora yearning to finally go on this “trip” he has been hearing about, one his father and mother made years ago due to the ongoing effects of the Salvadoran Civil War and one he must make to reunite with them. What was expected to take two short weeks turns into nine weeks of life-altering events, a coming-of-age for Javier. He faces the wide open sea for the first time, experiences different cultures that he must take on in order to keep moving north, goes on tiresome desert treks, and encounters border patrol. His detailed descriptions and observations are both honest and zany, the roots of a young writer begin to show: his personification and naming of cacti, his meticulous reporting of dates and events, and his attention to the smells and textures associated with his time in the desert are all notable.
Solito, while a book immediately about migration, is an ode to the family he found in the strangers that accompanied him, Chino, Patricia, and Carla. They become his family for the sake of travel, but the tenderness and care they show was not all what Javier expects. He extends this
sentiment for other strangers, those who are left behind and even to those whose character is questionable. This journey, as expected, is not without obstacle, but surprisingly, not without love. As they move closer and closer to the U.S., an impending sense of loss infuses the last few chapters.
And we are not given relief. We are not to revel in a nine year old boy’s reunion with his parents. Perhaps, it is just as well—this book is not for us, but for Zamora’s nine year old self, for the solitos and solitas to fill in the blanks with their own stories. Whether it was an awkward hug, leaping into family members’ arms, we are not privy to it, nor should we expect it.
Solito is not just a story of the desire to reunite with family, but of how to reunite with his family he must say goodbye to his beloved home in El Salvador, his extended family, and must eventually part ways from Chino, Patricia, and Carla─his surrogate family. It is a must-read, letting us in on the reality of migration. It’s a story that has no desire to contribute to the countless books and articles of trauma-laden migration narratives, the “prequel” to the myth of the American Dream.
Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
Allison Argueta-Claros is an undergraduate student at New York University. She is studying an individualized major centered on immigration narratives through policy, literature, and journalism with a minor in Creative writing. She spends her time writing, reading, and making playlists.
