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March 26, 2006

An Odyssey of a Child

I read this background story from the San Francisco Chronicle on Enrique’s Journey, by Sonia Nazario, and immediately ordered the book. Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is a rare journalist—-one who actually goes above and beyond to get her story:

"I determined that 48,000 children enter the United States alone, without a parent, each year from Mexico and Central America," Nazario says. "Some of those are coming for jobs, but the majority are coming to find a parent. And in three of four cases it's a mother, usually a single mother, who left them behind."

The story was overwhelming: Some of the children are as young as 7, many are robbed or raped during their journey, some fall off the train and get sucked under the wheels. Nazario knew from experience that the most powerful way to illustrate the story was through the specifics of one individual. After meeting Enrique in Nuevo Laredo, a town on the Texas-Mexico border, she retraced his steps, traveling 1,600 miles on seven freight trains.

She interviewed his mother, Lourdes, in North Carolina, and traveled to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital where Enrique lived until he was 15. The series took two years to report and write for the L.A. Times. And when it came time to expand the series into a book, she went back and spent three months retracing his steps a second time. . .

When I get the book and read it I’ll review it here.

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