Children of the Land

Summary (from the publisher): When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United State, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. He regained his vision but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention, for fear of being truly seen. Before Hernandez Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hope that he might never seem extraordinary. 

With beauty, grace, and honesty, Hernandez Castillo recounts his and his family's encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened to the door to an armed ICE officer; of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so he could work to support his family; of his father's deportation and the decade he spent waiting to return, only to be denied reentry; and of his mother's heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren to reunite with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor. 

Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines, and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen. 

Review:  I received an uncorrected proof copy of this memoir from HarperCollins. 

This heart-wrenching memoir written by poet Marcelo Harnandez Castilo details his experiences as an undocumented migrant in America from the time he was five. In this moving narrative, he recounts opening the door to see an armed ICE officer, the strained relationship with his father who is deported and lives separately from his family, and the constant fear his whole family lives in. 

Marcelo's story puts a human face on the struggles and fears faced by undocumented migrants in America. This is a story of a boy who feels as if he doesn't quite belong either in America or Mexico. Of a conflicted son who clearly has very mixed emotions when it comes to his father who is isolated in Mexico, and expresses great pain at the hard life his mother has had to lead. This memoir displays the effects of families divided by the border, as over time they become accustomed to their father's absence: "There was already nothing left of him in the house except for some old tools in the garage and the dip on his side of the bed, the outline of his absence weathered beneath the weight of his stillness over the years" (3). 

This was a lyrical memoir that fully illuminates a family's pain due to immigration laws. The author makes himself completely vulnerable, revealing his deepest feelings about his parents, his sexuality, his marriage, his country. 

Stars: 3.5