Oh, America, can you see and notice us, standing before you?
On your lands and shores we arrive: tossed into detention
for a place at your table and in your pages of history.
Who’s a pioneer or settler now? We migrate to your door
for inalienable rights and truths so self-evident.
Stories you cover and hide like our face and labor.
See us now and be the liberty that enlightens the world.
R. Joseph Rodríguez, from “Oh, America, Can You See?”
(Rodríguez, “Oh, America, Can You See Us?”)
Immigrants who come to the United States are by nature optimists—they leave everything they know and love in hopes of a better life.
(Sonia Nazario, Enrique’s Journey, Adapted for Young People 15)
Introduction
Many migrants who travel in search of labor as well as immigrants who leave their place of birth to live permanently in a new country arrive daily to the lands and shores of the United States. They seek entry for a new life filled with hope and equal opportunity. Their reasons for immigrating vary, but often they have been driven out of their native countries due to instability and strife, caused by factors such as discrimination, persecution, poverty, violence, and war. The new arrivals range in status from naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, refugees, asylum seekers, and international students to those on long-term temporary visas and others designated as unauthorized immigrants. With new policies enacted by the US Congress each year, categories and opportunities vary and change, leading to challenges in gaining access to equal opportunity and a better life in the United States.
The US Census Bureau reported that, as of July 1, 2016, people of Hispanic origin are the nation’s largest ethnic or racial minority. Overall, Latinos constitute 17.8 percent of the nation’s total population. Of the Latino population, youth are a significant group. More specifically, for Latino-origin youth, as Eileen Patten has explained, “Hispanics are the youngest major racial or ethnic group in the United States. About one-third, or 17.9 million, of the nation’s Hispanic population is younger than 18, and about a quarter, or 14.6 million, of all Hispanics are Millennials (ages 18 to 33 in 2014)” (3). Latino-origin adolescents comprise a large segment of the adolescent population in the United States.
In Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions , Valeria Luiselli chronicles the North American refugee experiences of youth and their families and the interrogations they face on paper and in person in their pursuit of residency and citizenship. “Why did you come to the United States?” the children are often asked (Luiselli 12). The answer is often about reunification with their families. The stories of migration and immigration appear in American literature as nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and drama and are written by authors from diverse backgrounds, cultures, nationalities, and religions. Their narratives are connected to the pluralism and histories shaping what has become our union to the present day and include youth seeking to name their identities as scribes, residents, and citizens of a new country they now call home (Rodríguez, Enacting Adolescent Literacies ).
In the making of the United States, indigenous communities faced persecution and extermination due to European immigration and policies enacted to create displacement and land theft in the name of progress to the detriment of many (Zinn and Stefoff). Today, recent arrivals must navigate bureaucracies and endure harsh treatment through policies that often lead to detention and expulsion.
Defining Our Changing Identities
To define the terms Latina and Latino can become a challenge, with varied meanings influenced by geography and multiracial categories. For this chapter, the definition and explanation provided by Suzanne Bost and Frances R. Aparicio are fitting for a discussion of both immigration and young adult (YA) literature. With an inclusive interpretation of histories and a hemispheric vision, Bost and Aparicio explain,
The history and politics of US Latino/a literature are distinct. “Latino/a” identity is a product of layers of conquest, colonialism, and cultural mixture—beginning with Western European territorial battles upon indigenous lands of the “New World,” from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, and, after most Latin American nations achieved independence, continuing through the US imperialist expansions of the nineteenth century to the present. (2)
This definition, which is interconnected with diverse influences—from colonization to sociopolitical encounters—informs the chapter, and thus the term Latina/o will be favored to reflect the hemispheric diversity and US diversity of Latino-origin adolescents and their families.
Culture, like identity, can be fluid and ever-changing, and this also applies to self-affirmation, self-identification, and self-membership of both migrants and immigrants coming of age in the United States. Alma Flor Ada and F. Isabel Campoy describe the Latina/o ethnic group as follows: “Most Latinos and Latinas have mixed origins: whether by blood or by culture. Their heritage includes roots from indigenous, African, and Spanish people, as well as the many others who have settled in Latin America over centuries” (7). Thus, histories, policies, and migration affect how Americans view newly-arrived immigrants and their place in US education and labor as well as the greater civic society.
In Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America , Roberto Gonzales notes, “[A] complex web of polarizing rhetoric regarding the place of immigrants in American society entangles the lives of these young undocumented Mexican immigrants. Descriptions such as ‘innocent’ and ‘deserving’ vie with ones such as ‘illegal’ that conflate nationality, immigration status, and outsiderness” (Gonzales 4). In the “web of polarizing” binaries, young immigrants’ voices tend to remain unheard or are relegated to the margin and away from the larger picture of telling their story as they come of age as immigrants in American society.
Young Adult (YA) literature provides avenues to express experiences and possibilities of hope for newcomers and new Americans. In Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century , Pam B. Cole identified the following as characteristics that have historically defined YA literature as a genre:
The protagonist is a teenager.
Events revolve around the protagonist and his/her struggle to resolve conflict.
The story is told from the viewpoint and in the voice of a young adult.
Literature is written by and for young adults.
Literature is marketed to the young adult audience.
Story doesn’t have a “storybook” or “happily-ever-after” ending—a characteristic of children’s books.
Parents are noticeably absent or at odds with young adults.
Themes address coming-of-age issues (e.g., maturity, sexuality, relationships, drugs).
Books contain under 300 pages, closer to 200. (49)
These characteristics position YA literature as being simultaneously distinct and accessible to both adolescents and adult populations. As a genre, YA literature continues to appeal to many readers, with bestselling and award-winning titles coming out each year.
Nilda Flores-González argues that immigrant Latina and Latino youths’ narratives “capture their feeling of exclusion from the imagined American community along three dimensions—racial categorization, racial hierarchy, and national inclusion” (2). She adds, “Racialized along these three dimensions, these youths find themselves outside of the boundaries of how ‘American’ is defined. Yet their narratives challenge their exclusion and push for their recognition as Americans” (2). In the face of exclusion, youth are claiming their selfhood and identities in the making of their own journey in a new land.
In the essay titled “What Good Is Literature in Our Time?,” Rudolfo A. Anaya reflects on the purpose of literature at the turn of the century. He explains, “Literature and art have always provided direction. The great myths of the past teach that the eternal return is possible for the individual and for the community” (Anaya 472). At the same time, forces of both exclusion and inclusion appear in literature as human migrations change demographics and societal participation. Moreover, whether voices are valued by canon keepers can often determine whether works are regarded as possessing literary merit and are studied in literature classrooms. However, this is changing as teachers’ text selections now include the hemispheric Américas.
How are definitions and identities of Latinas/os shaping what we read, examine, and nationalize? John Morán González notes,
Latina/o literature renders in aesthetically powerful ways the dynamics of life-in-diaspora that has become characteristic of the contemporary world, in which migrant flows continually disturb the boundaries of the nationalisms they exceed, whether that of the sending nation or that of the receiving one. Simultaneously, Latina/o literature indexes the historical development of life-in-diaspora through the specific stages of its unfolding in the Américas over more than two centuries. (xxiii)
The indexing that González describes mirrors the experiences of many migrants and immigrants whose stories also appear in YA literature. However, in the building of a literary canon about the migrant and immigrant experience, issues concerning belonging and non-belonging, inclusion and exclusion, and native and non-native status of both migrant and immigrant readership are evident. For instance, the exclusion and inclusion do not rest solely on the editors and the adopted texts in digital and nondigital forms, but on educators and readers who decide whose voices merit literary analysis and have value. In the article “A Postcolonial Primer with Multicultural YA Literature,” Victor Malvo-Juvera argues, “By connecting fictive texts and real-world examples, students can begin to understand how immigrants are often Othered through debasement in political discourse” (47). Thus, in the selected extracts from YA literature that follow, the youth and their families presented are humanized via literary works that tell their stories of struggle, survival, and triumph as they come of age in a country divided by their presence, contributions, and future.
Meet Enrique and the Journey
Pulitzer Prize-winner Sonia Nazario’s journalism addresses some of this country’s on-going challenges that include hunger, drug addiction, and immigration. Her reporting and writing about social issues affecting US life and thought span more than twenty years. A fluent Spanish speaker and of Jewish ancestry, Nazario’s personal history includes living in Argentina during the Guerra Sucia , Dirty War, which the Argentine government named during state-sanctioned terrorism from 1974 through 1983.
In 2000, a sixteen-year-old boy named Enrique left his home village in Honduras in search of his mother, who had immigrated years earlier to the United States. Nazario retraced the journey that both Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, and Enrique braved through Central America and México to reach the United States. Nazario, in Enrique’s Journey; The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother, Adapted for Young People , tells their story of separation and homecoming to shine a light for Americans, who are often shielded from the fact-based stories of struggle to reach a new country. In fact, she notes six guiding questions that informed her migrant journey as a journalist in order to narrate the odyssey of Latina and Latino immigrants:
What’s the exact route migrants take?
What are the best and worst things that can happen at each step of the way?
The places where migrants face the greatest cruelty? And the greatest kindness?
Where are the places along the [train] tracks where the gangs rob, where the bandits kill people?
Where do Mexican immigration authorities stop the train?
Might I be the only woman on the train? (Nazario 15)
Enrique is young, resilient, and determined to reach his mother in the United States. He leaves Honduras on a perilous journey riddled with danger and violence; during his numerous attempts to arrive in the United States and reunite with his mother, he often encounters law enforcement officers and vigilantes, who send him back to Honduras. Nazario paints the picture of his circumstances and journeys as follows:
Enrique wades chest-deep across the Río Suchiate. The river forms a border. Behind him is Guatemala. Before him is México’s southernmost state, Chiapas. “Ahora nos enfrentamos a la bestia. Now we face the beast,” migrants say when they enter Chiapas. Enrique will risk “the beast” again because he needs to find his mother. This is his eighth attempt to reach el Norte. (65)
Nazario, like Enrique, rides El Tren de la Muerte —The Train of Death—as it traverses the length of México for a nearly 1,450-mile journey. The freight train line is also known as La Bestia —The Beast—and El Tren de los Desconocidos —The Train of the Unknowns—by its riders, who endure hardship and even face death as they ride atop the trains and hold on to make the journey North. The journey is treacherous and risks include death, which riders face along the thousand-mile stretch through the continent.
In a reflection, Nazario explains, “Enrique and the migrants I spent time with gave me a priceless gift. They reminded me of the value of what I have. They taught me that people are willing to die in their quest to obtain what I often take for granted” (14). Nazario’s reflection reveals the perils migrants face daily and the comfort and safety many Americans take for granted. She argues that immigrants “become our neighbors, children in our schools, [and] workers in our homes” to form a ‘greater fabric’ of the United States” (15).
Meet Julia Reyes in Chicago
Erika L. Sánchez describes herself as “a poet, feminist, and cheerleader for young women everywhere.” Moreover, she is an essayist, journalist, and novelist who grew up in the mostly working-class town of Cicero, Illinois, which borders Chicago’s southwest side. As a daughter of undocumented Mexicans from the state of Durango, Sánchez possesses the determination to defy borders of any kind in her life and art. While growing up, her role model was—and continues to be—Lisa Simpson from the animated sitcom The Simpsons . She explained that since she was twelve years old, she dreamed of becoming a successful writer. Moreover, she dreamed of writing complex, empowering narratives about girls of color and, especially, stories that she yearned to read then as a young adult.
In Sánchez’s YA novel I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter , readers meet the protagonist Julia Reyes, who is US-born and a daughter of Mexican-origin, immigrant parents living in Chicago, Illinois. Partly autofictive and loosely based on Sánchez’s experiences, Julia is coming of age as an adolescent in a changing, conflicting world. Julia has already had to deal with the accidental death of her older sister Olga, who was killed as she entered a crosswalk. Known as the least favorite daughter, Julia must face conflicts within her family and also define herself in her own terms as an adolescent. Julia’s mother has plans for her daughter’s development and future that are not Julia’s choices. The plans include a quinceañera , adherence to cultural norms, and acceptance of family responsibilities that are often in conflict with practices in the United States. In an empowering, first-person point of view, Julia explains,
I’ve done the calculations and have figured out that from the ages of thirteen to fifteen, I’ve spent about forty-five percent of my life grounded. Seriously, what kind of life is that? I know I mess up sometimes, I know I can be a sarcastic jerk, I know I’m not the daughter my parents wanted, but Amá treats me like I’m a degenerate. (Sánchez 116)
Julia’s analysis is the story of cultural change and shifts that many adolescent children of immigrants can face in the United States. This may be due to cultural expectations and pressures as well as generational change affected by families immigrating to a new country. Julia’s perspectives shed light on becoming and being an independent, female adolescent, but also succumbing to the expectations and norms as a first-generation immigrant who is influenced by two cultures, identities, and ways of seeing the world.
Julia’s perception of the border conflicts with the enforcement and policies that were enacted for control and authority. She points out to her boyfriend Esteban on a trip in central México: “[The border’s] nothing by a giant wound, a big gash between two countries. Why does it have to be like that? I don’t understand. It’s just some random, stupid line. How can anyone tell people where they can and can’t go?” (Sánchez 280). Julia’s interpretations of the border are marked by alienation, frustration, and even anger faced by many who traverse borders seeking a better life.
We read about Julia’s ways of seeing and reading the world that includes the following six essential experiences and trials: (1) developing and maintaining friendships as an adolescent who is coming of age, (2) facing verbal and sexual harassment as well as low expectations, (3) coming to sexuality on her own terms as an adolescent girl, (4) accepting her identity as a writer in the face of obstacles and indifference, (5) meeting a boyfriend who cares and listens with mindfulness, and (6) pursuing higher education with the support of a teacher and her own family.
Julia’s visit to her parents’ native land permits her to meet more of her extended family members. She witnesses their ways of coping and surviving, which make the migrant and immigrant journeys more complex, relevant, and vivid for Julia far from her native Chicago. She learns about her parents’ traumatic journey across the Río Grande into El Paso, Texas, and their migration thereafter to the Midwestern United States. Lastly, Julia faces emotional, family, and social conflicts, which include mistreatment and self-harm. She learns to understand change in the quest to become human and loved.
Looking Homeward or Coming Home Again
The poet Diana García was born in the San Joaquín Valley of California, in a migrant farm labor camp owned by the California Packing Corporation. She pursued university studies in creative writing and remains committed to social action by documenting the stories of migrant-worker life in the United States. Her poems humanize the lives of laborers and their families as she constructs narratives that are both simple and complex with sensory detail that reflect sociopolitical realities. García’s poems capture the everyday affairs of children, men, and women who are in constant movement to live, work, and survive with dignity.
García examines the point of view of people living outside of the United States as well as those who have chosen the United States for a better life. In fact, many choices and circumstances are faced by people who become desperate in the search for employment and safety for themselves and their families. García’s poems humanize the story of leaving home and coming home again for both the migrant and immigrant in a changing, global world shaped by competing economies.
Like in Nazario’s account about Enrique, the human movement northward via El Tren de la Muerte, The Train of Death, appears as a North Star to a life with opportunities for poor and working-class families. For instance, in the narrative poem “On Staying Behind,” García provides the perspective of a mother regarding her daughter’s imminent migration:
She thinks I don’t know why she runs. Not to catch the trains
or escape la migra or outrun packs of wild dogs. I listened
to the advice her cousins sent, the older girl cousins, married,
hard-working girls who left our village with their husbands.
The journey is harsh, more than two weeks if she’s lucky.
So many dangers, only two younger male cousins to protect her.
My daughter has no husband. She cannot stay with me. I will
not have her stay with me to starve. She leaves with no wealth.
She and her cousins are their own wealth. I see the strength
in their arms and shoulders, blood that pumps through heart and lungs.
No water, no beans or corn. Today, the woman studying our village,
una profe de los Estados Unidos , spilled our pot of beans.
This woman has never known hunger. I saw her shock when I sifted
beans from dirt, placed beans, dirt, the bit of water I had planned to use
for grinding the last dried corn. What is a little dirt, I thought, the same dirt
in which I grew these beans. A child should not see a mother starve to death.
A mother should not hear that her last daughter has disappeared.
I bless this last child, daughter of my heart, the one I hoped
would wrap my body in a serape and lay me next to her father
at the edge of the church yard. I bless her journey, wishing
her safe passage, fleet journey. I have said my prayers
to the village saints. I have eaten my small meal. I will lay
myself alongside her dog tonight. Perhaps tomorrow, more food
will come my way. Again, I stay behind. I will wait and hope. (11-12)
The speaker in the poem is a survivor and possesses intuition about the generational journeys even while “stay[ing] behind.” Sacrifice and selflessness appear in the poem with a love for family and understanding of human migrations. The poem communicates how humans must make decisions for sustenance and everyday essentials known as the “hierarchy of needs” in the 1943 study titled A Theory of Human Motivation by Abraham H. Maslow (9). According to Maslow’s theory, humans possess “needs [that] arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency” (6). Moreover, Maslow explains:
[T]he appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man [sic ] is a perpetually wanting animal. Also[,] no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives. (6)
The poem communicates the roles of a provider for others who depend on water, beans, and corn, among other essentials. The migrant and immigrant must remember the purpose of leaving the homeland to undertake a journey that is also made for the sake of those who stayed behind in bleak, challenging circumstances.
As a counterpart to the previous poem, García presents the poem “On Leaving” in support of a dialogue on migration and immigration. The speaker here seems to be the young adult daughter of the speaker from the previous poem, who believes that she is ready for the journey to the North. The readers learn about the conditions that lead to flight in countries far from the United States. The journey is driven by economic and social injustices that dominate the lives of many humans seeking a better way to live and survive. García begins the poem with a description about human flight and speed to reach a destination:
I can run five times around the village, my dog beside me. I have tested
myself against her speed, my younger cousins’ endurance. I win.
My cousins go with me this morning, their dark hair glossy, so young
their shoulders. Their mothers tell me to watch over them.
I have said goodbye to all who remain, grayed village elders,
wooden statues of saints in our small church, my mother.
I go with the blessings of my mother and her sisters. I am the youngest
of the girl cousins, no great beauty, no wealth to keep me here.
I wear only what I have. I carry a blouse one aunt gave me,
a friend’s old sandals for days when heat persists into the night.
My cousins who have made the journey send this advice: travel early
in the morning and at night. When you reach the trains, gain a space
in the middle; don’t move. Don’t let anyone steal your space. When we
reach México, we are to look for coyotes wearing yellow bandanas,
not red or green. Those wearing yellow come from our region,
they speak our language, they are known to our village.
If no one waits at the border wearing yellow, we wait or take
our chances. I have waited two years for this chance. No more.
If the coyotes separate me from my two cousins, mis primas
instruct me to let them take what they will, but not my life, never my life.
They think I don’t know what they mean. I know what a man
can take from a woman. I know my younger cousins’ pride.
I will protect them from their pride, our family honor. I will scream
or fight if I can. I will run if I can. I know now how fast I can run. (12-13)
The poem presents the endangered lives of migrants and immigrants who, in the quest for a better life, are then beset by danger, stress, and violence, much like an odyssey with tribulations and tragedies. Speed on foot as a hiker or runner can save a life, but danger lurks for all and that includes physical and sexual assaults. Specific codes, rules, and messengers appear in the journey and can either help or hinder the traveler seeking to arrive safely at the destination in México and the United States. Overall, the journey is treacherous and imperiled by many difficult circumstances and possibilities.
García’s two corresponding poems chronicle the odysseys of migrants and immigrants seeking a better life. This often means that people must leave their native lands to survive elsewhere, far from familiar spaces with extended family members.
The circumstances immigrants face are depicted by García in a humanizing manner to bring voice to their plight in flight. In a complementary approach, the anthropologist Jason De León chronicles the “lives and bodies of undocumented people” who face “complicated life histories that reflect an intimate relationship with transnational migration and global economic inequality” (4-5).
Future Migrations and Immigrants
Families immigrate to the United States due to the instabilities created by an international superpower along with other countries in the parts of the world that they currently inhabit (Mignolo). The journalist José Antonio Vargas describes his immigrant journey as follows:
I struggled with conflicting realities of belonging and exclusion and still do. My mother and I have not seen each other in person for over twenty years, not from deportation, but from an equally unyielding U.S. immigration policy that prevented her, a single parent with limited means, from legally joining me in California when my grandfather smuggled me over from the Philippines at age twelve. I weathered the transition as best I could. (xi-xii)
Vargas’s perspectives about belonging, inclusion, and exclusion are prevalent in YA literature. The experiences articulated by characters in YA literature emphasize the challenges faced by young immigrants across the country in their families, schools, and civic communities.
As shown in the narratives that feature Enrique and Julia, and the speakers in the two poems, immigrants face tribulations and hardships that they must overcome to make a new life in a new country. The experiences presented are fraught with chaos, indifference, and uncertainty as immigrants attempt to claim a home, identity, and voice. To gain their selfhood, these individuals seek a community of hope and inclusion that values their humanity and dignity.
Works Cited
Ada, Alma Flor, and F. Isabel Campoy. Yes! We Are Latinos: Poems and Prose about the Latino Experience. Charlesbridge, 2013.
Anaya, Rudolfo A. “What Good Is Literature in Our Time?” American Literary History , vol. 100, no. 3, 1998, pp. 471-477.
Blanco, Richard. The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood. Ecco Press, Harper Collins, 2014.
Bost, Suzanne, and Frances R. Aparicio. “Introduction.” The Routledge Companion to Latino/a Literature , edited by Suzanne Bost and Frances R. Aparicio, Routledge, 2013, pp. 1-10.
Cole, Pam B. Young Adult Literature in the 21st Century. McGraw-Hill Higher Education, 2009.
De León, Jason. The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail. U of California P, 2015.
Flores-González, Nilda. Citizens but Not Americans: Race and Belonging among Latino Millennials. New York UP, 2017.
García, Diana. “On Leaving.” Prairie Schooner , vol. 88, no. 4, 2014, pp. 11-12.
__________. “On Staying Behind.” Prairie Schooner , vol. 88, no. 4, 2014, pp. 12-13.
Gonzales, Roberto G. Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America. U of California P, 2016.
González, John Morán. “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to Latina/o American Literature , edited by John Morán González, Cambridge UP, 2016, pp. xxiii-xxxv.
Luiselli, Valeria. Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions. Translated by Lizzie Davis, Coffee House P, 2017.
Malvo-Juvera, Victor. “A Postcolonial Primer with Multicultural YA Literature.” English Journal , vol. 107, no. 1, 2017, pp. 41-47.
Maslow, Abraham H. A Theory of Motivation. Martino Fine Books, 2013.
Mignolo, Walter. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton UP, 2000.
Nazario, Sonia. Enrique’s Journey (The Young Adult Adaptation): The True Story of a Boy Determined to Reunite with His Mother . Ember, 2014.
Patten, Eileen. The Nation’s Latino Population Is Defined by its Youth. Pew Research Center, 2016.
Rodríguez, R. Joseph. Enacting Adolescent Literacies across Communities: Latino/a Scribes and Their Rites. Lexington Books, The Rowman & Littlefield Group, Inc, 2017.
__________. “Oh, America, Can You See Us?” Unpublished poem, 2018.
Sánchez, Erika L. I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2017.
Vargas, Jose Antonio. “Foreword.” Lives in Limbo: Undocumented and Coming of Age in America , by Roberto G. Gonzales, U of California P, 2016, pp. xi-xiv.
Zinn, Howard, and Rebecca Stefoff. A Young People’s History of the United States: Columbus to the War on Terror. Seven Stories P, 2009.
The poems “On Staying Behind” and “On Leaving” by Diana García are reprinted from Prairie Schooner (Volume 88, Number 4, Winter 2014) and by permission of Diana García and University of Nebraska Press. Copyright © 2014 by Nebraska University Press.