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    Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions
    Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions
    Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions

    By Valeria Luiselli and Jon Lee Anderson

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    American Book Award Winner: A “moving, intimate” account of serving as a translator for undocumented children facing deportation (The New York Times Book Review). Nonfiction Finalist for the Kirkus PrizeFinalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Structured around the forty questions volunteer worker Valeria Luiselli translates from a court system form and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—here and back home. “Luiselli’s prose is always lush and astute, but this long essay, which borrows its framework from questions on the cold, bureaucratic work sheets with which she became so familiar (for example, ‘Did anything happen on your trip to the U.S. that scared or hurt you?’), is teeming with urgency…In this slim volume about the spectacular failure of the American Dream, she tells the stories of the unnamed children she’s encountered and their fears and desires, as well as her own family’s immigration story.” —Vulture “Worthy of inclusion in a great American (and international) canon of writing about migration.” –Texas Observer “A powerful indictment of American immigration policy, [Tell Me How It Ends] examines a system that has failed child refugees in particular.” —Financial Times “Masterfully blends journalism, auto/biography, and political history into a compelling and cohesive narrative. . . . Luiselli uses the personal to get political but smartly sidesteps identity politics to focus on policy instead.”—The Rumpus

    Editor's Note

    In the news…

    This slim book examines the current immigration crisis through a 40-question survey child migrants must take and the stakes riding on how children answer, “Why did you come to the United States?”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCoffee House Press
    Release dateMar 13, 2017
    ISBN9781566894968
    Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions

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    Reviews for Tell Me How It Ends

    4.5/5

    171 ratings13 reviews

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    • 5/5
      If you have already read The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail by Óscar Martínez, or something very similar, then this book will not be raising many new questions for you. It does go more into the lives of those Central America refugees that make it all the way into America's immigration system. This book -- it is really more like an extra long magazine article -- is not important so much for what it talks about but in how it says it. The writing is beautiful. What it says and how it says is beautiful. The fact that its subject is so painful does not distract from that. In its beauty, the reader finds important insight. Go ahead, find a copy, read it, and try to prove me wrong.
    • 5/5
      Very powerful analysis on a subject that doesn't get nearly enough attention.
    • 5/5
      Luiselli served as a translator for children in immigration court in Long Island. This brief and powerful work describes her work interviewing children from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and other Central American countries who have fled violence and terror to seek asylum in the US. And it goes so much further than that. Written with pathos, compassion, remarkable objectivity, and clarity of vision, Luiselli's essay calls for a hemispheric approach to the immigration crisis. She cuts through stereotypes and ignorance, illuminating some (clearly not all) of the factors contributing to the huge number of children who have taken the unspeakably perilous journey from their home country, through inhospitable Mexico, to present themselves to the US Border Patrol in the past handful of years. Tell Me How it Ends is a timely work, beautifully written. Highly, even urgently recommended.
    • 5/5
      This little book is labelled an essay, but it feels longer than that to me, and certainly something of more gravitas. It is cleverly structure around the 40 questions in an intake questionnaire given to children (children!) who arrive unaccompanied at the US/Mexico border. These children have often had their passage paid by relatives already in the US, but who for fear of not being allowed back in, can't escort them themselves. The kids are escaping gang violence from their home towns, relatives hire "coyotes" to get them near enough to the border, at which point the children are left to find an official to hand themselves in to...a US immigration official mind, as there are many others who would attack, traffic, rape, report them for deportation (for a nice reward), or force them into work or gangs. If successfully detained by US officials, they start the process of being admitted legally. The author was a translator who helped the children complete these forms, and so has heard a lot about the hardships the kids fled from. Ironically, she noted, children were often reticent about divulging details of their hardships, because of pride, and for wanting to seem capable and in control, and this often went against them later as there was not enough evidence that they were escaping horrific situations (one boy's brother was shot in their own home in front of him for refusing to join a drug gang). Although it relays some terrible and sad personal stories, this is balanced with some contextual political and social information as well, which is why it is a perfect read for anyone with any kind of opinion on immigration.
    • 5/5
      Incredible text, so effective because it mixes great prose, personal experience, others’ experience, and explains the law, all in 100 pages.
    • 5/5
      A heartbreaking and beautiful read. I cannot express the impact this book of essays has had on me. My hope is that more people read it with an open heart and mind.
    • 5/5
      This little book is labelled an essay, but it feels longer than that to me, and certainly something of more gravitas. It is cleverly structure around the 40 questions in an intake questionnaire given to children (children!) who arrive unaccompanied at the US/Mexico border. These children have often had their passage paid by relatives already in the US, but who for fear of not being allowed back in, can't escort them themselves. The kids are escaping gang violence from their home towns, relatives hire "coyotes" to get them near enough to the border, at which point the children are left to find an official to hand themselves in to...a US immigration official mind, as there are many others who would attack, traffic, rape, report them for deportation (for a nice reward), or force them into work or gangs. If successfully detained by US officials, they start the process of being admitted legally. The author was a translator who helped the children complete these forms, and so has heard a lot about the hardships the kids fled from. Ironically, she noted, children were often reticent about divulging details of their hardships, because of pride, and for wanting to seem capable and in control, and this often went against them later as there was not enough evidence that they were escaping horrific situations (one boy's brother was shot in their own home in front of him for refusing to join a drug gang). Although it relays some terrible and sad personal stories, this is balanced with some contextual political and social information as well, which is why it is a perfect read for anyone with any kind of opinion on immigration.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      “Children run and flee. They have an instinct for survival, perhaps that allows them to endure almost anything. Just to make it to the other side of horror, whatever may be waiting for them.”“Because—how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do you say: No, we do not find inspiration here, but we find a country that is as beautiful as it is broken, and we are somehow now part of it, so we are also broken with it, and feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and are trying to figure out how to do something about all that.”  This timely essay draws on Luiselli's experiences volunteering as an interpreter in New York City's immigration courts and focuses on the forty questions that she translates for her clients, from the official forms. The author was born in Mexico City and raised in South Africa, so she knows first hand of the difficulties and trials of immigration. Her writing is strong and passionate and it can be emotionally disturbing, as she explores the hardships of the thousands of children that make this deadly trek each year. This is a short read, just over a 100 pages but packs quite a punch. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      I really loved the blend of history, policy, biography, and memoir that made up the storytelling here. The reader on the audio wasn't great, but Luiselli's voice came through.
    • 3/5
      the stories are important and the book is educational.

      3 stars because..well, after coming from 'Evicted' this seems pretty light in its overall commentary, I guess.
    • 4/5
      Should be included in high school curriculum across the country and a must-read for anyone who supports the Build-A-Wall mentality. This gracefully written account of Valeria Luiselli's own experience with the immigration system in the US, but especially her work as a translator for the thousands of unaccompanied children who arrive at the border with Mexico is eye-opening and heart-wrenching all at once. The forty questions refer to the intake form she is required to use to process each child before it is determined whether they will get legal assistance or be deported. Their answers are similar in the experience of leaving and traveling the vast distance from home (majority are from Central America, not Mexico) but vastly different in the details of why they left, how their escape went and what they hope for here in the US -- and the fact that they are even allowed hope. However, it is not all happy endings or even known endings because the system is overwhelmed by the numbers of children they try to service and the reality that they are more like refugees than immigrants given the conditions they have fled from. Luiselli has done inspiring work, getting students involved in DOING something rather than wringing hands or worse yet, turning a blind eye. Still, it is such a morass it is hard to know where to wade in.
    • 5/5
      This is an account of the time Valeria Luiselli spent serving as a translator for unaccompanied child asylum seekers in 2016. Moving between the history of why children are forced into taking a dangerous journey alone, one that, at best, ends with an uncertain welcome at the end of it, the facts about the migration and with the stories of the children Luiselli interviewed, this very short book is powerful and effective. Highly recommended. I'll be thinking about this one for some time.When causes are discussed, the general consensus and underlying assumption seem to be that the origins are circumscribed to "sending" countries and their many local problems. No one suggests that the causes are deeply embedded in our shared hemispheric history and are therefore not some distant problem in a foreign country no one can locate on a map, but in fact a transnational problem that includes the United States--not as a distant observer or passive victim that must now deal with thousands of unwanted children arriving at the southern border, but rather as an active historical participant in the circumstances that generated that problem.
    • 4/5
      A very well done essay (collection of essays) on the child immigration/refugee crises that's been going on since (longer, but escalated in) 2014. Told by the author who helped volunteering as a interpreter of a child immigration court in NY.

      It definitely brings to the fore how much of an issue this is, and that its something that actually affects us all, not just those migrating, not just of Hispanic ancestry, etc. Its a problem for all of America and its citizens, and its not just a problem BECAUSE of these kids, its a problem that we need to HELP these kids.

      Its very insightful and educating for all those read. Quick, easy, relatable, and down to earth. Sometimes there's some language (F bomb) that isn't necessary but doesn't hinder or hurt the work.


      The ending coda though, I think undermines things a little bit. Trump winning the presidency, was a big deal, especially for Hispanics, especially for everything she was involved in. But her stating that she wanted to hit someone, insult them, and then actually describes what she said to the person when she made them take their headphones out, just because they had a "MAGA" hat on, despite the person not doing/saying anything to her --- is a bit much, and undermines her points, and her character a bit.

      Outside of that small bit, though, this is a wonderful piece of work, and a must read for people looking to educate themselves on the issue.

    Book preview

    Tell Me How It Ends - Valeria Luiselli

    INTRODUCTION

    In Tell Me How It Ends there are no answers, only more questions. In this urgent, haunting, exquisitely written little book, the questions asked by Valeria Luiselli are her own, her children’s, and those she finds on the questionnaire drawn up by immigration attorneys for the tens of thousands of Central American children who arrive in the United States each year after being smuggled across Mexico to the U.S. These children are the most vulnerable members of an ongoing exodus of Central Americans fleeing poverty and violence in their shattered nations in the expectation of finding a better life in the United States. Many of the children are raped, robbed, or even killed along the way.

    As a Mexican woman living in the United States, facing her own travails with the immigration service for a green card that would grant her U.S. residency and permission to work, Luiselli became transfixed by the surge of child refugees during the summer of 2014. She began working as an interpreter with an immigration court in New York City, where she was given the task of assisting the children with the intake questionnaire, asking its questions of them in Spanish and then translating their answers. Depending on those answers, they might or might not be granted legal sanctuary of some sort—and thus a future—in the United States. Luiselli soon realized it was impossible to fit the children’s lives neatly into the boxes provided, observing, The children’s stories are always shuffled, stuttered, always shattered beyond the repair of a narrative order. The problem with trying to tell their story is that it has no beginning, no middle, and no end.

    The result of Luiselli’s experience is this book, in which the questions posed to the refugee children become catalysts for her own questions about the nature of family, childhood, and community, and above all, about national identity and belonging. She offers a fascinating rumination on the complex nature of the attraction of the United States for the refugee children and their families—and even for herself—despite its unwelcoming nature, casual racism, and official disinterest in their very existence. Before coming to the United States, I knew what others know: that the cruelty of its borders was only a thin crust, and that on the other side a possible life was waiting, she concludes. I understood, some time after, that once you stay here long enough, you begin to remember the place where you originally came from the way a backyard might look from a high window in the deep of winter: a skeleton of the world, a tract of abandonment, objects dead and obsolete. And once you’re here, you’re ready to give everything, or almost everything, to stay and play a part in the great theater of belonging.

    Luiselli’s book appears during an especially raw juncture in the relationship between her birthplace, Mexico, and her adoptive home, the United States. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, the nature of the relationship between the two countries became an essential plank in the candidacy of Republican billionaire Donald Trump, who notoriously referred to Mexicans as unwelcome intruders, as criminals, drug dealers, and rapists and called for a wall to be built along the border, one that, in an apparent effort to be as humiliating as possible, he insisted Mexico will pay for.

    In this hallucinatory global political climate, in which bigoted notions about national identity, sect, and race have reared their heads to a degree not seen in many decades, Trump’s statements gained him a sizeable American following. It is distressingly clear that the fears and hatreds he has unleashed—especially since he, and not Hillary Clinton, won the election to become president—will not be easily put to rest. What does this mean for the refugee children and their families who flee shattered communities to the United States, hoping to make themselves whole again? Luiselli does not know, but she feels certain that whatever their reception in the United States, the children will keep coming as long as there is a need to escape from realities too frightening to bear. Children run and flee. They have an instinct for survival, perhaps, that allows them to endure almost anything just to make it to the other side of horror, whatever may be waiting there for them. And what awaits them is a bewildering and often daunting reality, with little in the way of guidance to help them adapt. After six months adjusting to life in a tough neighborhood of New York, one Honduran youngster tells Luiselli what he has learned thus far: his new home is a shithole full of pandilleros, just like Tegucigalpa.

    In the course of her work, Luiselli’s young daughter has heard about some of the children’s stories, and she repeatedly asks, as children do, Tell me how it ends, Mamma. Luiselli has no answers for her. There are, as yet, no happy endings, but toward the end of the book she offers a small hint of promise. It comes in the form of a decision by ten young Americans, just a few years older than the children of the intake questionnaires, to form a group that will help teenage refugees who have made it to the United States and managed to stay.

    This is a profoundly moving book, one that, with its modest hundred pages and simple, teasing title, presents itself as a mere story guided by forty questions. But appearances are, after all, beguiling, and this is a most powerful story, beautifully told by Valeria Luiselli. I feel sure that whoever reads it will not regret it, nor easily forget it.

    Jon Lee Anderson

    Dorset, England

    January 14, 2017

    I

    BORDER

    Why did you come to the United States? That’s the first question on the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants. The questionnaire is used in the federal immigration court in New York City where I started working as a volunteer interpreter in 2015. My task there is a simple one: I interview children, following the intake questionnaire, and then translate their stories from Spanish to English.

    But nothing is ever that simple. I hear words, spoken in the mouths of children, threaded in complex narratives. They are delivered with hesitance, sometimes distrust, always with fear. I have to transform them into written words, succinct sentences, and barren terms. The children’s stories are always shuffled, stuttered, always shattered beyond the repair of a narrative order. The problem with trying to tell their story is that it has no beginning, no middle, and no end.

    When the intake interview with a child is over, I meet with lawyers to deliver and explain my transcription and occasional notes. The lawyers then analyze the child’s responses, trying to come up with options for a viable defense against a child’s deportation and the potential relief he or she is likely to get. The next step is to find legal representation. Once an attorney has agreed to take on a case, the real legal battle begins. If that battle is won, the child will obtain some form of immigration relief. If it is lost, they will receive a deportation order from a judge.

    I watch our own children sleep in the back seat of the car as we cross the George Washington Bridge into New Jersey. I glance back now and then from the co pilot’s seat at my ten-year-old stepson, visiting us from Mexico, and my five-year-old daughter. Behind the wheel, my husband concentrates on the road ahead.

    It is the summer of 2014. We are waiting for our green cards to be either granted or denied and, in the meantime, we decide to go on a family road trip. We will drive from Harlem, New York, to a town in Cochise County, Arizona, near the U.S.- Mexico border.

    According to the slightly offensive parlance of U.S. immigration law, for the three years or so that we had lived in New York we had been nonresident aliens. That’s the term used to describe anyone from outside the United States—alien—whether or not they are residents. There are nonresident aliens, resident aliens, and even removable aliens—that I know of. We wanted

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