I read this because it was my job to, it is the bookclub book for March 10 and I am the discussion leader at the B&N where I work. When I first heard about it I was excited. It sounded like a great book to talk about. A middle class woman who owns a little bookstore in Acapulco. She has a son and her husband is a journalist. A journalist writing about the cartels.
One of his articles gets him and others in their family killed sending Lydia and her son on the run from the Cartel leader. This puts her on the road to trying to get to the United States. The trip is long and dangerous. Not only is she trying to get her and her son away from the Cartel that killed her family but the trip itself is inherently dangerous, crossing the dessert, the risk of harm from others migrating, the risk of abuse by the "authorities", and of course getting caught and sent back. I was excited to read this.
But then the controversy began. It started with anger over a white woman writing this story and trying to make it her own. Much of the blame goes to how the rollout was handled by Flat Iron Books. They played up her having a grandmother from Puerto Rico. They talked about her husband having been undocumented. But then more became known. While coming to the main land from Puerto Rican is not even close to the same experience as those coming from the South American countries or Mexico, people from PR are United States citizens and can travel freely to the states. The part that was harder to swallow was her husband's story. Yes he came here as an undocumented person, but he came from Ireland. As a white man he would not have had the same experience, lived with the same fears, as a person with brown/dark skin, and to equate the two is wrong. And so there was cries that this was not just a person writing a well researched, well written story, but a person trying to appropriate it as their own. More on this after a brief rundown on what I thought of the book itself.
And with this background I started to read the book. I tried not to judge it by the controversy and at times I succeeded but it was always in the back of my mind. The story was actually really good. I felt for Lydia and Luca. Beto broke my heart. Soledad and Rebeca are incredible characters and I felt their pain. As she travels north we see the migrant journey through her eyes. There is so much pain and danger and fear. But she sees kindness and beauty too. She is forced to face the life of privilege she had before and the way she used to think of those making this journey while she watched, read, or listened to the news from the comfort of her home and business and it made her sad and angry with herself and uncomfortable at time. It is something I could relate to reading it as a white woman and the unearned privilege that comes with the luck of being born in this skin. It is painful and uncomfortable but is needed if there will ever be change. The imagery is stunning, the pain seeps off the page, and it is hard to deny how well the story is written.
But it is so hard to separate it from the outside noise. I thought it was all on Flat Iron, they even issued an apology for the way they handled the launch of this book. But then I read the author's notes and it felt like she was embracing this narrative too. I don't know if that was the choice of the editor or not but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
So I am not going to rate this book on goodreads with stars, I will just say it was a 5 star story with a 0 star background and leave it at that.
(Finished March 8, 2019)
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