Enrique's Journey Critical Review

Critical Review

Imagine leaving everything you have ever known for your whole life behind. Your family, your friends, the comfort of having something familiar, all gone. All for a dangerous journey to get to a foreign place, having a fear that you might not have a chance of making it. Many people endure this expedition like Enrique in search for a better life. Sonia Nazario has done an outstanding job with Enrique’s Journey, making you feel as though you are on this journey with Enrique, making this trek from Honduras to the U.S. I find it to be a rare occasion if I can make it through the first page of a nonfiction book without waking up an hour later and finding it on the floor. This book, however, almost feels as though it should be a fiction novel. I found it so hard to put down, that even

when driving I would pick it up and get honked at by other cars because I got so involved and had not realized I had a green light. If you ask me, reading Enrique’s Journey while driving should not be legal! I can see why so many people have gone bananas about Enrique’s Journey. In Enrique’s Journey, Nazario shows through her writing that abandonment impacts the decisions we make in the future. With happiness, I can say I have found an eye opening and heart-warming novel to add to my list of favorites. I would 100% recommend this book to anyone looking for a great read about family, love, abandonment, finding yourself and to learn a little more about the hardships of immigration.
Enrique’s Journey follows the life of a young boy on an expedition to reunite with his mother. At the age of five, Enrique’s mother, Lourdes, leaves Honduras to find a job in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique and his sister so they can continue their schooling. Lourdes promises Enrique before she leaves that she will return quickly. Years pass and Enrique begs Lourdes to come back. Without her, he becomes very troubled. Shoved from house to house to live with different family members, Enrique feels like a foster child or outsider among his blood relatives throughout his entire life. After ten years apart, he decides he will go find her. Enrique sets off alone from Honduras, with three things: a little money, his mother’s phone number and one change of clothes. Enrique leaves everything behind knowing he might never come back. Enrique starts the dangerous and illegal trek up the length of Mexico, the only way he can: clinging to the sides and tops of trains. With fearless determination and a need to be by his mother’s side, Enrique travels through the dangerous, unknown world. Gangsters dominate the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to loot and deport him. Despite the struggles, Enrique pushes forward with hope, bravery and the kindness of strangers.
(WARNING...SPOILER ALERT, IF YOU DECIDE TO READ ON!)
On his last attempt heading north, Enrique stops on the banks of the Rio Grande in Mexico.

Here he stays in this extremely dangerous location, but he raises enough money to phone his mother. She helps to pay for a smuggler to take him across the river and into the United States. Enrique crosses the river on an inner tube and arrives in Florida. He soon reunites with his mother for the first time in over a ten years. He and Lourdes hug each other, but they do not cry. Enrique then moves in with Lourdes and her roommates, and begins to work. Enrique imagined something different when reuniting with his mother. After a couple more years, Enrique sends for Maria, his pregnant girlfriend who he left behind when traveling to look for his mother. This couple has to make the option of abandoning their child and repeating the same vicious cycle Enrique’s mother did to him or ending the cycle right there and bringing the baby with them to the United States. Enrique’s Journey has so much to offer than what I can provide in this little bit of a summary. Believe me, this book will open your eyes, it brings out a rollercoaster of emotion and takes you on a journey of self

discovery.
The way in which Nazario gives insight into the life of Enrique allows the reader to not only understand the hardships of the immigration process but feel as though they are with Enrique the whole time throughout the book. Although Nazario never went with Enrique on the treacherous journey, she tells the story from his viewpoint. After having interviewed Enrique and hundreds of others, as well as having taken the same trip herself, several times, she knows the experiences that these people have to face while traveling. Nazario’s unique and fun writing style makes this book easy for readers of almost all ages to understand. The way Nazario presents the story truly makes the book so incredible. Instead of Enrique only speaking in first-person, Nazario tells the story without using her personal feelings, in third-person, something I imagine very hard to do with a subject as touchy as immigration and a journey as tough as Enrique’s. Nazario makes us feel for Lourdes, the mother who left Enrique. If anyone else tried to write this book I think they would make Lourdes sound like a monster for abandoning her son at such a young age; Nazario, however, allows us to see Lourdes through Enriques eyes in the beginning, as someone still beautiful but still distant. When Enrique talks about his mother he might mention one bad thing about her leaving, then he reflects on all the good about her. Enrique mentions how he has “felt alone all [his] life,” and after he quickly mentions “she always told [him] she loved [him]” (Nazario 157). Enrique continuously pictures the day when he reunites with his mother especially during difficult times through his journey. Will she be excited? Happy? Angry? Enrique’s emotion’s happen to be so mixed and jumbled, he can’t wait to see Lourdes but he also has a very big fear of being rejected by Lourdes. Nazario also uses what she witnessed while on her trek and also adds in the different migrant stories to make this book so much more complete. I really liked that she did this because when reading I thought older men only took this expedition. Many accounts of what had happened to not only men on this journey but also women shocked me. I had no clue this many people would risk their lives to give their families the best possible opportunities. Nazario includes a lot of information and facts about immigration in the ending. It felt almost as though it ended up being a very informative textbook, but written in a way where I still wanted to get to the ending.
While reading this book, my hands gripped the cover so hard my knuckles turned white. I thought I had the script for an action or thriller movie. The limbs severed by trains, the drugs, the police brutality, Enrique’s agonizing experiences left me with my jaw dropped to the floor half the time while reading. How could a boy this age undergo and complete a journey with so much danger to reach his goal? The extremely brutal and shocking honesty depicted in this novel introduced me to a side of the world that I never really knew existed. Through Nazario’s descriptive language, she really reaches into the depths of the immigration process. Throughout the book Nazario placed small sections of photos which she had taken on her journey. These pictures showed the hardships these migrants faced while crossing a river, or riding on top of trains. Nazario’s powerful word choice Nazario chose really helps the story develop. My heart broke after reading about the horrors that happened to Enrique, the things I fear to be my worst nightmare. On one of his ventures, Enrique stops, to look in “window glass,” Now he doesn't see the same boy he saw before he left home, he sees someone completely different, he sees a “battered,” “scrawny,” and “disfigured” man, thus creating a “determination to push northward" (Nazario 100). This really shows the quick transition Enrique had to go through: he never had a childhood and had to grow up extremely fast with no time to be a kid. I fell in love with the way she included common Spanish phrases throughout the book. This added a touch of a different culture. Nazario carefully develops her theme about abandonment, using a combination of wording and the different experiences that these immigrants have to face. Enrique and Maria Isabel have a chance to stop the cycle of abandonment by bringing their daughter with them to America. Instead they make the decision and to leave her in Tegucigalpa with Enrique’s sister. When Maria Isabel leaves for good, she “ does not say good-bye to her daughter,” she proves to be cold and bitter by giving her no hug as she “walks briskly into the bus terminal,” deciding not “to look back,” (Nazario 240). This goes to show that the decision Lourdes made to abandon him stuck with him and impacted his choice and Maria’s when deciding to let the baby come to the United States. While reading this book I never lost interest because on every page I always found something so interesting that kept me intrigued the whole time. The detail Nazario provides about the injuries that take place throughout this book showed that this far from easy journey could only be conquered by the bravest. You will not forget the cringing detail Nazario includes when migrants get hurt by the trains in multiple passages. When one migrant attempts to hop on the train, “His fingers uncurled,” and when he fell to the ground, “the wheels flattened his right foot, then sliced through his left leg above the knee,” (Nazario 90). I pictured this brutal image and could feel the pain this young boy felt. This book tells the truth. Written in a way that although heartbreakingly sad, shows what really happens to these migrants if they try to come to America. Nothing hidden, no barriers.
Enrique's Journey turned out to be an incredible book. Including a true story about an immigration trip from the depths of South America to the United States, to a boy finding himself and trying to make peace with pain from the abandonment, to possibly choosing the same destructive path his mother chose. I give this book a definite five stars and I know some day in the future I will pull this book off the shelf to reread it again because I enjoyed it that much. If you want to find a book packed with adventure, that will make you feel many emotions at the same time this book has your name on it. I would highly recommend this to anyone who might want to be better informed on a current issue today: immigration. Before reading Enrique’s Journey I didn’t have a very good understanding of the immigration process. Now I can say I have a greater appreciation and a greater awareness to the types of challenges these people had to face just to get to America.