In 1999, when Javier Zamora was nine years old, his grandfather took him by bus from his home in El Salvador to Tecun Uman, a city on the Guatemala-Mexico border. After fourteen days there—during which time Grandpa insists that Javier memorize a map of Mexico and that he “learn to lie better”—Grandpa puts Javier on a bus with a coyote named Don Dago, so that he can travel to the US where his parents are waiting for him. Javier begins his journey with six other migrantes, who, in his mind, he calls “The Six, like the Power Rangers.” But plans change and people make their own decisions, until finally Javier travels as part of a “little fake family” that consists of Patricia and her daughter Carla, plus a man named Chino. Javier Zamora, now a widely published poet, tells the story of this harrowing journey in Solito: A Memoir (Hogarth Books). The book maintains the perspective of the author’s ten-year-old self: afraid of flush toilets and too shy to undress in front of Patricia when she helps him take a shower. Ten-year-old Javier is too young to anticipate the danger they will encounter; he experiences everything in the present, through the smells, sounds and sights around him. Crossing the desert, Javier gives names to the unfamiliar foliage, such as the “cheerleader bush” that has flowers like little yellow pompoms, and when they are dragged off a bus and forced to lie spread-eagled in the dirt, a small lizard gets close to his face and he names her Paula. “Hola, Paula.” Javier’s journey took seven weeks, during most of which his parents had no idea where he was. Despite many fiascos and several gut-wrenching attempts to cross the final border, Chino, Patricia and Carla kept Javier close and, what was incredible to me, they never gave up.

—Patty Osborne

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