Solito, Solita; Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America .Edited by Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman

Publisher: Haymarket Books
Publication date:  April 16th 2019
Pages: 336

Solito Solita is a book with interviews with youth refugees from Central America. The interviewed refugees are mainly from three Central American countries; Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. They have in common that they all fled what Central America is notorious for; poverty, gangs, civil war, violence (even violence at home y family members) and just having no future in their home country. Mostly are under thread of having to flee or having to die, and choose for the first one, altough the chance of reaching and eventually get some kind of residence status in the USA is very small. The refugees interviewed in this book are interviewed at different places, both at the border and in the US, where some are trying to make a  new life with college or work, or are  waitin till they can do so. 

A few of the narrators are;
ADRIÁN, from Guatemala City, whose mother was shot to death before his eyes. He refused to join a gang, rode across Mexico atop cargo trains, crossed the US border as a minor, and was handcuffed and thrown into ICE detention on his eighteenth birthday.

ROSA, a Salvadoran mother fighting to save her life as well as her daughter’s after death squads threatened her family. Together they trekked through the jungles on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, where masked men assaulted them.

GABRIEL, who after surviving sexual abuse starting at the age of eight fled to the United States, and through study, legal support and work, is now attending UC Berkeley.


SOLEDAD, a young woman from Honduras who fled at age 14 after being abused by her stepfather, abandoned by her mother, and forced into child labor.

They describe what lead them to fled, and their dangerous border crossing journeys, that mostly led them to an USA right in to the Trump administration, where it was getting more difficult to get into the USA then it already was, where they where put in harsh detention centre, some where send back or family members where and that even in Mexico they where met with hostility and that what the media portrays is very different then al the different cultures South and Central America beholds, and that most people just put it on one big heap in their minds. Anyhow, it was heartbreaking to read some of the stories, and how they had no choice at all but to flee to the US as the other option was death. This book truly shows that not all are coming to the US for the wrong reasons.
It is a very good book that I truly recommend reading!