My Side of the River
My side of the River is another book in the line of books that I’ve started reading, like solito (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/sho…), that of the economic migrant. Her story is also an autobiography of her life, but the road she took is vastly different from that of Javier Zamora.
Hers is the journey of being born IN the US, thus she’s born with a passport, but since her parents don’t have residency, they’re forced into the shadow labor market that is the US. Her mother was working as a cleaner at a movie theatre while pregnant with her brother, as an example, and being paid less than 100 dollars per week.
The first 2/3 of the book was amazing. It gives you insight into what makes the authoress such a tough, smart, and “do whatever it takes” person. She graduated top of her class in spite of her disadvantages, she found people who would help her, she managed to start clubs amidst going hungry because her parents couldn’t send her money to feed her. She survived other numerous things, like her parents having to leave her behind in the US because their visas got denied.
The last 1/3 of the book however, drops a bit mostly because her college life deviated quite a bit from her high school struggles. She’s in college, she made it, she’s struggling a bit for grades, but honestly that’s fairly common. Its hard to keep on being the best student when you’re competing with other best students. That’s not the reason why I felt like it dropped off though. the last 1/3 of the book felt more about entitlement than the first 2/3 did, which was about surviving what life throws at you.
She wonders why people like her parents, or her heritage, cannot get the same rights and privileges that people born on the other side of the river can. She rails against the system that keeps her from her parents, and how patently unfair it all is. Which is fine. but it does belie the point that all countries does it. Mexico also tries to keep south americans from staying in mexico, calling those people lazy. There’s no country that does open borders, although the US is closest to it (no one challenges migrant workers for real paperwork because the system doesn’t really want to enforce it. the last state that tried enforcing e-verify lost a few hundred millions in lost farm goods).
All in all, this book isn’t as good as solito, mostly because the struggles wasn’t quite as epic. Its still a great book in seeing how against all odds, a migrant with almost everythign working against her, still manages to thrive and get to the top of the system.
Its worth a read, but read solito first, because that’s still the better migrant story.