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Solito

Javier Zamora

Start date: July 30, 2024

Finish date: August 12, 2024

Why we're reading this: Solito is Franklin Afternoon Book Discussion's August selection! This book club will be held in person at…more
[close] Solito is Franklin Afternoon Book Discussion's August selection! This book club will be held in person at Franklin Avenue Library on Monday, 8/12 at 1:00 PM. Visit our website or call 515-283-4152 for more details.

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Aug 06, 2023 Becky rated it it was amazing

Shelves: biography-memoir, travel, non-fiction, history, library, social-justice

Solido by Javier Zamora, published 2022
In Spanish Solido means “alone” or “unaccompanied”. The author of this book gives a detailed, harrowing, absolutely true account of traveling as a nine- year- old unaccompanied boy from his home in a small village in El Salvador to “La USA” to meet his parents who were already living in California. As I began reading I could not believe that a nine- year- old could accurately recount this much detail about every day and every hour of this miraculous journey Solido by Javier Zamora, published 2022
In Spanish Solido means “alone” or “unaccompanied”. The author of this book gives a detailed, harrowing, absolutely true account of traveling as a nine- year- old unaccompanied boy from his home in a small village in El Salvador to “La USA” to meet his parents who were already living in California. As I began reading I could not believe that a nine- year- old could accurately recount this much detail about every day and every hour of this miraculous journey. The recounting is told in the first person as though nine- year- old Javier is speaking directly to the reader. It helped me believe when I flipped to the last two pages of the book titled “April 5, 2021”, where his now 31- year- old self explains that it took therapy to recall the details and horror and fear and that he had barely shared with his parents and others for most of the elapsed time. It also helped that he was very bright, well loved and well educated in El Salvador, attended Stanford, and is now a renowned poet.

One best part of Javier’s story is the incredible heroism of three strangers (Chino, Patricia, and Carla) who became his fake family, repeatedly risking their own lives to shepherd him safely to the USA. Another is me reading about the insecurities that a nine- year- old must feel when he is so alone, away from parents, grandparents, and all those he can talk to and be comforted by. He is afraid to poop in a flush toilet, thinking he will be carried out to sea (he had an outhouse at home in El Salvador); he is embarrassed to take his shirt off in front of strangers, as he is chubby and his classmates at home teased him about having “boobs”. And he misunderstands what “La USA” will be like from TV telenovelas, all McDonalds and swimming pools in backyards and Toys R Us on every corner. At a bathroom in an Acapulco hotel he marvels ‘I turn the silver faucet and water falls from it. It's like we're in a fancy sit-down restaurant like Pizza Hut in San Salvador!” ...more

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