World

Javier Zamora Carried a Heavy Load. He Laid it to Rest on the Page.


Javier Zamora had a lot going for him in 2019: He won poetry awards, an Ivy League scholarship, and an “extraordinary ability” visa that ultimately helped him secure entry status. his residency in the United States.

But 20 years after he crossed the border at the age of 9, with no parents, on his way to a new life, the immigration journey that nearly killed him is still moving.

“On the outside I’m fine,” Zamora said, but inside he was struggling. He said he was having trouble at work and his closest relationships were suffering: “My personal life fell apart.”

When, during a casual encounter at a local bar, several therapists asked him why he drank alone on a weekday afternoon, it was the right question at the right time. suitable – and a turning point for Zamora.

The couple introduced him to one of their students, a specialist in child migration, who herself had come to the United States as a girl. She became Zamora’s therapist, and his work with her helped remove “the rock in front of my door to happiness,” he says. It also provides the building grounds for his new memoir about his migratory experiences, “Solito.”

“Actually this book wouldn’t exist, I wouldn’t get married, I wouldn’t be strangely happy without my therapist,” says Zamora, now 32.

Coming out Tuesday from Hogarth, “Solito” is both a personal work of healing and an implicit appeal for nations, including the United States, to address the difficulties and dangers that matter. immigration does to Zamora, and continues to do to countless others.

Told from the perspective of 9-year-old Zamora, the book follows his journey from a small town in El Salvador, where he lives with his grandparents, through Guatemala, Mexico and Arizona. It’s a heartbreaking, often heartbreaking tale of precarious boat trips, runaways with corrupt border guards, and hopeless days in the Sonoran Desert. But the young narrator’s innocence – and at times lack of awareness of the real dangers of his journey – also allows for moments of humor, camaraderie, even amusement.

Walking for hours through the desert, the young Zamora herself couldn’t help but marvel at what she saw: cactus “like large pineapples on branches” or trees “like giants watching over me.” close to us”. He named his favorite plants: Lonely Plants, Squid Plants, Velvet Trees. He noticed the twinkling stars. “¿Why are they blinking like that? ¿Can they see the dirt under our feet? Like old newspapers. Wrinkled. Cracking sound. Like walking on eggshells. Cracked. Liters of water in everyone’s hands. Scam. We are walking again. “

Speaking of how he deals with the dangers of the journey, he says, “you have to overcome fear somehow,” adding, “finding beauty in the landscape or making jokes or really love food, these become your new joy. I want to honor that aspect. “

Zamora’s eyewitness narrator shows the inadequacy of the term “unaccompanied minor”: This is a vulnerable and distant young boy experiencing his first experience. larger world experience. His protection – and ultimately his survival – comes only thanks to the mishaps posed by a temporary estranged family he encounters along the way.

“I didn’t expect the people in the book to read it. But my dream scenario is that they open it up and just look at the dedication page,” said Zamora, “to see that there’s this book out there, thank them, because I don’t remember thanking them in real life. “

“Solito” ends with Zamora’s final march through the desert and the reunion of Zamora with her parents after years of separation; His father left El Salvador in 1991, fleeing the civil war, and his mother joined him four years later. But even with her family, growing up in Northern California, Zamora found that life as an immigrant comes with its own set of challenges. He talks about his past, so assimilated that his closest friends don’t know he’s from another country, he said.

He was a bad student “not academically, but behaviorally,” he said, “because I kept this inside of me.”

Because of his immigration status, Zamora was unable to visit El Salvador in high school, but the country spoke to him. He came across the work of Roque Dalton, the Salvadoran poet and activist who wrote truthfully about oppression, class struggle, freedom and love. He found the words of Leticia Hernández-Linares, a Salvadoran-American poet. He began to realize that he too could have a say and took to heart Toni Morrison’s encouragement that if the book you want to read hasn’t been written, then “you have to write it”.

“Everybody talks about that quote, but it’s a great quote!” Zamora said. “That and reading Roque Dalton made me realize that no Salvadoran immigrant who wrote poetry, ever lived that experience. A whole new world has opened up”.

In high school, Zamora interned at 826 Valencia, a nonprofit writing organization for young people founded by Dave Eggers and Nínive Calegari in San Francisco. Zamora recalls meeting Eggers, who “was very ordinary and ordinary, completely gave me a different idea of ​​what it was like to be a ‘writer’.” During his internship, he received tutoring from a local poet and made his first attempt at writing.

The effort is worth it. Zamora has hosted writing fellowships at Harvard, Stanford, the National Foundation for the Arts, and the Poetry Foundation. “Unaccompanied,” his debut poetry book published by Copper Canyon Publishing in 2017, won the Northern California Book Award and was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Eggers calls him “the essential voice of America”.

Later, when Zamora returned to 826 Valencia as a guest lecturer for a summer program, the students “really listened to someone reflect on their own résumé,” said Bita Nazarian, managing director. of 826 Valencia said. “It was a huge motivator for them. He returned it. “

Representation remains an important theme in Zamora’s work. In “Solito” and in her poetry, Zamora emphasizes her writing with punctuation and the Spanish caliche, or Salvadoran dialect, because “that’s the way we think, that’s the way I think,” I said.

Now, the chances of a child or teen immigrating to the United States “find themselves on this site more because of my job than because of me,” he said.

Zamora also begins to interact more directly with his past. After moving to Tucson, Ariz., – and taking into account the fact that, just a short drive from home, he can see the desert hills he traversed as a child – he started volunteering at Salvavision, a migrant support organization that operates in the desert corridors south of the city, a focal point for border crossings, deportations, and gang activity. More than 125 bodies have been found in the area this year alone, according to official figures.

The organization recently opened a resource center for migrants in Sasabe, Sonora, a small border town about 70 miles from Tucson, where Zamora spent the night on the streets when he was 9 years old. Transportation to town has spiked during the pandemic.

“Sending people there is a crime,” said Dora Rodríguez, chief executive officer of Salvavision. “Even for locals there isn’t any public transport, hospitals, shelters.”

For Zamora, at least, the immediate migration risks are gone. With his visa, he can live without having to worry about “hit a border patrol car”. But he continued to reconcile the conflicting emotions of an El Salvadoran child living in America.

He recognized the opportunities he had in this country, he said. But he was also aware that, given the far-reaching involvement of the United States in the country’s civil war, which ran from 1980 to 1992, and Expel gang members In an El Salvador that was devastated after the war ended, the U.S. government shares responsibility for the realities that drove Salvadorans to emigrate in the first place: gang violence, political instability, lack of economic opportunities economic.

“Even under an American right-wing government, there are more possibilities than any government in my country, that’s why people come here,” Zamora said. “Politics is secondary; it is a mortal thing. “

Meanwhile, Zamora continues to heal, though he still hasn’t told his parents much about all that happened to him as a child. His mother tried to read “Solito”, but couldn’t finish the first chapter, seeing what her son had to go through when trying to reach her. Zamora told his parents in the book’s admission, writing that he hopes they “have no guilt, because I forgave you a long time ago.”

More than anything, Zamora said, it needed strength to deal with its trauma.

“I myself am 9 years old, I feel like following me like a shadow. I never stopped to look at him or honor him for who he is,” he said: “A superhero. “



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