Somewhere we are human Authentic voices on migration, survival, and new beginnings

Review by Booklist Review

Writers Grande and Guiñansaca have created an anthology of poems and short essays by a diverse group of contributors telling stories of immigration to the U.S. Introduced by Viet Thanh Nguyen, it covers a wide geographical range as the authors recount their physical and emotional journeys predicated by the heart-rendering circumstances that led to their families leaving home. The emphasis is on the struggle to belong and what exactly that means at a time when immigration is not only highly politicized but also presented as yet another line of demarcation in America's fracturing national identity. The immense variety in the contributors' personal experiences is impressive, ranging from those who have obtained citizenship and green cards to those under the DACA program or seeking asylum or having been deported or exiled. They touch on so many different facets of the immigrant experience that readers will find much to ponder, while the varying styles and approaches provide opportunities to learn from the lives of others and also to experience how creative writing enriches our understanding of each other and our lives.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

"The paradox of immigration and xenophobia that exists at the heart of America" is explored in this heartrending anthology edited by novelist Grande (A Ballad of Love and Glory) and poet Guiñansaca (Nostalgia and Borders). In the evocative poem "Caravan," Kaveh Bassiri reflects on the aspirations of those who join immigrant caravans to the U.S.: "They are coming as refugees, resident aliens, dreamers,/ Leafing out of the undocumented past/ To translate themselves." In "Guilty of Being Lucky," Lucy Rodriguez-Hanley discusses the "trauma of separation" endured by migrant mothers and their children, including those who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the Trump administration's "Zero Tolerance" policy. Elsewhere, Emilia Fiallo describes how, at age 15, she began to reproach her undocumented father for bringing his family from Ecuador to the U.S. "without a plan": "The times I couldn't travel, I blamed him. The car I couldn't drive, I blamed him. I aimed all my undocumented emotional bullets at my father. Because I could not hurt this country, I hurt him." Wide-ranging yet consistently affecting, these pieces offer a crucial and inspired survey of the immigrant experience in America. Agent: Johanna Castillo, Writers House. (June)

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Review by Library Journal Review

In Also a Poet, New York Times best-selling author Calhoun blends literary history and memoir, examining her relationship with her father, art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl, and their shared passion for Frank O'Hara's work as she draws on taped interviews he conducted for a never-completed biography of O'Hara. In Somewhere We Are Human, distinguished writers/activists Grande and Guiñansaca compile 44 essays, poems, and artworks by migrants, refugees, and Dreamers that help clarify the lives of those who are undocumented. Featuring a selection of letters exchanged by Ernest Hemingway and his son Patrick over two decades, Dear Papa was edited by Patrick Hemingway's nephew Brendan Hemingway and his grandson Stephen Adams (40,000-copy first printing). Winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize, Horn's Voice of the Fish uses fish, water, and mythic imagery to illuminate the trans experience, with travels through Russia and a devastating injury the author suffered as backdrop. Former deputy editor of The New Yorker and former editor of the New York Times Book Review, McGrath looks back on childhood summers as both joyous memory and obvious idealization in The Summer Friend, also considering a close friendship with someone from a very different background. Starting out with his nearly dying on the day he was born, the world's best-selling novelist has some amazing stories to tell in James Patterson by James Patterson (250,000-copy first printing). Having probed the lives of Mary Shelley and Annabella Milbanke and Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's wife and daughter, acclaimed biographer Seymour takes on Jean Rhys, the celebrated author of Wide Sargasso Sea in I Used to Live Here Once.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A genre-crossing anthology of work by undocumented or formerly undocumented writers who migrated to the U.S. In this collection, edited by Grande and Guiñansaca--self-described migrants from Mexico and Ecuador, respectively--diverse voices and experiences converge around common themes. An undocumented writer from Brazil, for example, conflates weight loss with the safety of invisibility from authorities and control over her precarious life, while an undocumented Mexican American learns how to ski to hide her status from her Wall Street colleagues. A Bangladeshi immigrant remembers the nightmares they had while undocumented, and a Mexican immigrant dreams of a lost friend as she negotiates her trans identity. Poets from Ethiopia and Iran remember escaping structural violence, while a Nigerian American immigrant writes about the emotional violence she faced in her new American home. Several of the pieces purposefully subvert the narrative of American exceptionalism, most notably an essay penned by a Mexican deportee who wonders whether, after her entry ban expires, she wants to return to the U.S. The work is expertly curated, encompassing not only a variety of races and ethnicities, but also a wide swath of sexual and gender identities. Several of the pieces are formally inventive, including "& I Came the Way Birds Came," by Jennif(f)er Tamayo, who artfully redacts sections of her narrative in a style that invokes government censorship; and Bo Thai's "Where Do We Go," a work of striking visual art. Although no compilation can ever capture every immigrant experience, this expansive text captures more than most, incorporating exciting new voices with more established ones and representing a truly kaleidoscopic range of lives. Though several pieces don't rise to the level of the others, this is an important, instructive book. Viet Thanh Nguyen provides the foreword. An innovative, artful collection of diverse, undocumented voices. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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