If you're curious / upset / bewildered by the border problems between the US and Mexico, this little book will provide some perspective. It was written during the Obama Administration, yet it describes thousands and thousands of children who arrive at the border without parents -- mostly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Sound familiar?So yes, the current crisis isn't current so much as ongoing. Luiselli's argument, based on her volunteer work as an intake interviewer, is that these kid...

An unsentimental yet compassionate book that centers the ongoing plight of Latin American child migrants in the United States. Valeria Luiselli uses her role as a translator for these children to explore the many misconceptions people have about them (e.g., they’re rapists or drug dealers) and reflect their truer lived experiences (e.g., they’re fleeing from immense hardship, poverty, pain and suffering). When these kids come into the United States, they still encounter such hardship and racism,...

In these short essays Luiselli weaves her own story in with those of the refugee children and families she worked with as an interpreter in the NY immigration court. As the title indicates, there are more questions than answers - yet the author beautifully illuminates the immigration crisis we are facing.

An utterly heartbreaking essay about refugee children heading into the USA from Central America. Luiselli worked as an interpreter at a NY court hearing applications to be allowed to stay and she structures this powerful essay around the 40 question intake interview the kids have to answer. It's almost incomprehensibly dreadful - the failures of domestic and international policy that have led us here are complex and many, but the fundamental inhumanity of our systems is on full display here. Unb...

with gifted prose and a compassionate, but penetrating gaze, luiselli personalizes the ongoing plight of latin american child migrants in the united states. her own immersion as a translator informs a trenchant first-hand account of the labyrinthine legal processes and inevitable bureaucratic indifference faced by undocumented youth. humane yet often horrifying, tell me how it ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis – and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency.

And perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible—is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us. Because being aware of what is happening in our era and choosing to do nothing about it has become unacceptable. Because we cannot allow ourselves to go on normalizing horror and violence. Because we can all be held accountable if something happens under our noses and we don’t dare even look. The asylum seeke

“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.”

Important information, didn't care for the execution or organization, but still worth reading for an illuminating, if heartbreaking primer on our broken immigration system as it relates to the least of these.

Sharp, short essay that shines a light on how America treats undocumented children. Luiselli, who's an excellent writer (though emotion veers in and out of this piece in unusual cadence), has worked in the federal immigration system as a translator and cannily structures the essay around the 40 questions that she asked children when trying to pair them with a lawyer. The goal is less about making an argument and more about trying to re-shift the grounds of discussion by breaking down the dangers...

“It is perhaps not the American Dream they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born."I wish I could force every person who chants "build a wall" or asks "why can't they just come here legally" to read this book. The 40 questions from the title are those Luiselli asks of detained children as a volunteer interpreter in federal immigration courts, and she uses this structure to give a concise, impassioned plea for us to recognize these ch...

The children who cross the Mexico border and arrive at the U.S. border are not "immigrants," not "illegals," not merely "undocumented minors." Those children are refugees of a war, and, as such, they should all have the right to asylum. But not all of them have it.Tell me how it ends, Mamma, my daughter asks me.I don't know. Tell me what happens next.Sometimes I make up an ending, a happy one. But most of the time I just say: I don't know how it ends yet. Watch me discuss it more in my reading v...

i'm such a Valeria Luiselli fangirl. her prose is like honey on the tongue, it's sweet and syrupy and sticky, it's like a pantry good, some delicacy to always have in supply. it's a gift that as readers we are blessed to even have received. i'm serious. i'm a fangirl.unlike her novels, but also very much like her novels, this piece is afforded a considerable amount of brutality in its reading simply based off subject matter. not only is it concerned with our truly systemic horror show of an immi...

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.In 2014, Valeria Luiselli, started writing a novel about the children seeking asylum in the US, and their treatment, including inhumane detention and deportation, by the Obama-administration immigration system, in particular the priority juvenile docket that gave those summoned by court just

This is what I posted on Litsy about an hour ago: "It‘s only now, thinking about it, that I begin to feel this book‘s relentless empty chill. American cruelty knows no bounds once it‘s legalized. Here the emotional shocks of how we treat these unaccompanied child refugees come so quickly in this little book that it‘s almost not possible to process while reading, or even at all. What they go through, in the many thousands...the little cruel window Luiselli witnessed...what can you say?"I finished...

Re-read after Lost Children Archive’s longlisting for the 2019 Booker Prize. “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. A short

Review originally posted on A Skeptical Reader.In Tell Me How It Ends, Valeria Luiselli takes us through the process of reviewing undocumented children stuck in a limbo of red tapes. The book gives us a glimpse of the treacherous journey these children make when crossing the southern borders of the United States. And no, they are not rapists or drug dealers. They are victims of violence and the world needs to start recognizing them as such.It begins with a very structured form of storytelling. I...

This short and powerful nonfiction piece by Valeria Luiselli is such a poignantly constructed insight into the immigration crisis/debate in America now. Luiselli relates her experiences working as a volunteer interviewing thousands of children from Central America who have been smuggled into the United States and are seeking residency/citizenship. She asks them questions from an intake questionnaire created by immigration lawyers that will play a large part in determining if the children will be...

A very strong, moving book about the refugee crisis here in the United States. Luiselli makes it clear that it is not an "immigration" crisis but a refugee one, children fleeing from horrific conditions that the U.S. played a part in creating.The book is built around a questionnaire that she did with the children in New York City volunteering as a translator. The picture that arises is that of traumatized children, lost, torn between two worlds. I had no idea of the extent of the dangers these c...

In this brief book that takes place during the Obama administration, novelist Valeria Luiselli recounts her experience volunteering as a translator/interpreter for refugee children in NYC immigration court. Tell Me How It Ends is one of those books that doesn't need a long summary or analysis, or at least I don't feel the need to provide one. Unless you already know a lot about this topic, you should read this book. The information it imparts is information everyone should have.

Shattering and vital. "Numbers and maps tell horror stories, but the stories of deepest horror are perhaps those for which there are no numbers, no maps, no possible accountability, no words ever written or spoken, And perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible— is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again, so that they come back, always to haunt and shame us. Because being aware of what is happening in our era and choosing to do nothing about it has becom...