Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay In Forty Questions

Home
no one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you
breath bloody in their throats
the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory
is holding a gun bigger than his body
you only leave home
when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you
fire under feet
hot blood in your belly
it’s not something you ever thought of doing
until the blade burnt threats into
your neck
and even then you carried the anthem under
your breath
only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet
sobbing as each mouthful of paper
made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied

no one chooses refugee camps
or strip searches where your
body is left aching
or prison,
because prison is safer
than a city of fire
and one prison guard
in the night
is better than a truckload
of men who look like your father
no one could take it
no one could stomach it
no one skin would be tough enough

the
go home blacks
refugees
dirty immigrants
asylum seekers
sucking our country dry
niggers with their hands out
they smell strange
savage
messed up their country and now they want
to mess ours up
how do the words
the dirty looks
roll off your backs
maybe because the blow is softer
than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender
than fourteen men between
your legs
or the insults are easier
to swallow
than rubble
than bone
than your child body
in pieces.
i want to go home,
but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun
and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home told you
to quicken your legs
leave your clothes behind
crawl through the desert
wade through the oceans
drown
save
be hunger
beg
forget pride
your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear
saying-
leave,
run away from me now
i dont know what i’ve become
but i know that anywhere
is safer than here

                                - Warsan Shire

Above is one of my favorite poems of all eternity. I remember the first time I read it, I was  floored. I could not speak. I felt it in my bones. And I cried. If it doesn't move you, I don't know what to tell you. I would reexamine your heart and your mind.

I would like to give a shoutout to Andrea from @nastymuchachitareads, as she is the one who recommended via Instagram for everyone to pick up the following book. In the midst of the immigration crisis of separating families at the Southern border, Coffee House Press in Minneapolis (<3) offered this book for a measly $5 and I could not NOT snatch it up.

The book is titled TELL ME HOW IT ENDS: AN ESSAY IN FORTY QUESTIONS.

Synopsis: An indictment of our treatment of undocumented children, a reckoning with our culpability for the dangers they are fleeing, and a damning confrontation between the ideals of the American dream and the reality of American racism and fear, Tell Me How It Ends is required reading for anyone concerned with human rights, human dignity, and our most fundamental responsibilities to each other. Luiselli's encounter with asylum seekers demands we see these children. What we do next is up to us.

Alma Guillermoprieto says of this book "In the warrens of New York City's federal immigration court, an adolescent boy from Honduras confronts a thoroughly confused immigration bureaucracy with the help of his translator, who is the author of this book. He is just one of thousands of immigrant children longing for permanence in this country, but we get to see him up close. With Valeria Luiselli as our guide, we navigate the corridors of a system that tries and fails to reconcile America's longstanding welcome of the poor, the terrorized, and the adventurous with its current fear and mistrust of immigrants. In the frightening year of 2017, this is a most necessary book, and a unique one, from a writer whose clear-eyed intelligence and marvelous literary imagination make every one of her narratives a compelling read."

This book was truly remarkable. Clocking in a 105 pages, no one has the excuse to not pick this up. While it is packed with emotion and you might need breaks, it can be read in one, single sitting. At least that's how I read it. I could not put it down. It was petrifying to think of the monstrosities that are currently, and have been, going on in our country, and in the world. The amount of evil and hate and ignorance that is brewing throughout humankind makes me feel so defeated and sometimes I do not know what to do. So, once I finished this, I went to the college campus in my town and bought an LSAT book and began to study for law school.

It's hard to think of the right words to write surrounding the recent political events happening to refugees and immigrants entering the United States. The separation families are facing is a moral injustice and a complete human rights violation. People, CHILDREN, are being imprisoned and inhumanely punished at the border while people are still hollering "Build the wall!" DACA is being threatened. Syrian refugees and other refugees seeking asylum from Middle Eastern countries are being completely demonized and targeted by right-wing extremists. The way political figures talk about these HUMANS appalls and upsets me. And I want to punch walls. I want to break glass. I want to riot. I want to punch Nazi's...I mean, republicans in the face for the hatred they are spewing and the damage they are causing. Part of my naivete wants to say this is not the America I know, but this is the way America has ALWAYS been. We are a country that has terrorized marginalized people for centuries, since the very beginning when we murdered, raped, tortured, and stole land from indigenous peoples. When we enslaved and imprisoned an entire race of human beings and are still currently locking them up at mass rates, gentrifying their neighborhoods, and letting our boys in blue murder them in plain sight. We have a president who is trying to erase the lives of transpeople. Who is trying to stop the rightful adoption process between same sex couples. Who is a literal rapist and who also appoints rapists to the highest court of the land. This IS our America. And reading books like this and then putting together a plan are how we change our America.

"Because - how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do you say: No, we do not find inspiration here, but we find a country that is as beautiful as it is broken, and we are somehow now part of it, so we are also broken with it, and feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and are trying to figure out how to do something about all of that."

Valeria snaps you in right away as she works as a translator with young immigrant children in court. Children who are alone, full of fear, hesitation, and missing home as they get asked "Why did you come to the U.S.?":

"Their answers vary, but they often point to a single pull factor: reunification with a parent or other close relative who migrated to the country years earlier. Other times, the answers point to push factors - the unthinkable circumstances the children are fleeing: extreme violence, persecution, and coercion by gangs, mental and physical abuse, forced labor, neglect, abandonment. It is not even the American dream that they pursue, but rather the more modest aspiration to wake up from the nightmare into which they were born."

While the book is often the narrative of Valeria and her own experience working with the courts, it is backed up by statistics and facts, like this one:

"The numbers tell stories.

Rapes: 80% of the women and girls who cross Mexico to get to the U.S. border are raped on the way. The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precautions as they begin the journey north.

Abductions: in 2011, the National Human Rights Commission in Mexico published a special report on immigrant abductions and kidnappings, revealing that the number of abduction victims between April and September 2010 - a period of just six months - was 11,333.

Deaths and disappearances: though it's impossible to establish an actual number, some sources estimate that, since 2006, around 120,000 migrants have disappeared in their transit through Mexico."

"Numbers and maps tell horror stories, but the stories of deepest horror are perhaps those for which there are no numbers, no maps, no possible accountability, no words ever written or spoken. And perhaps the only way to grant any justice - were that even possible - is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us. Because being aware of what is happening in our era and choosing to do nothing about it has become unacceptable. Because we cannot allow ourselves to go on normalizing horror and violence. Because we can all be held accountable if something happens under our noses and we don't dare even look."

The book follows the list of 40 questions children are forced to answer to an immigration judge. Children as young as TWO YEARS OLD. They are getting asked “Why did you come here?” “Do you feel safe?” and other absurd questions that children should never have to feel pressured to answer in a scary courtroom alone. It is despicable.

Valeria walks you through the entire process that children are required to go through to gain asylum or immigration status – all implications from the Obama administration and before.  During his time (Obama) as president, a priority juvenile docket was created  - in which Valeria calls it “the governments coldest, cruelest possible answer to the arrival of refugee children.”  It accelerated the process of juveniles deportation proceedings to only 21 days – when it was originally 12 months. This gave time for the children, their families, and their lawyers to prepare a case and to get them asylum. Nothing of this sort could possibly be done to its highest potential in only 3 weeks, no matter how much overtime these lawyers, often public defenders, put in.

While she says in the beginning that this book only offers more questions, not more answers, she does double down on the fear mongering that politicians plant in the minds of American citizens. She addresses how we discuss immigrants and how our presidents refer to them as “job stealers and rapists,” but they never take the time to divulge in why these people are truly coming here. “It did not answer why. The very notion of this “immigration crisis” referred only to the sudden surge in arrivals of Central American children to the United States. From the beginning, the crisis was viewed as institutional hindrance, a problem that Homeland Security was “suffering” and that Congress and immigration judges had to solve. Few narratives have made the effort to turn things around and understand the crisis from the point of view of the children involved. The political response to the crisis, therefore, has always been centered on one question, which is more or less: What do we do with all these children now? Or, in blunter terms: How do we get rid of them or dissuade them from coming?”

The media does not help – they often refer to “undocumented persons” as “illegals,” and “refugees” as “immigrants.” The way in which we label humans makes a difference. Political discourse, no matter how small, matters. And it is infuriating the way these journalists and politicians discuss refugees, because THEY are the reason due to colonialism and wars that many of these countries are so violent and why people are fleeing them. American interference has been a top factor in countries going through unrest and political uprisings. We often make things worse and our greed sucks the lifeblood out of these countries across the globe.

“Until all the governments involved – the American, Mexican, Salvadoran, Honduran, and Guatamalan governments, at least – acknowledge their shared accountability in the roots and causes of the children’s exodus, solutions to the crisis will be impossible. The attitude in the United States toward child migrants is not always blatantly negative, but generally speaking, it is based on a kind of misunderstanding or voluntary ignorance. Debate around the matter has persistently and cynically overlooked the causes of the exodus. When causes are discussed, the general consensus and underlying assumption seem to be that the origins are circumscribed to “sending” countries and their many local problems. No one suggests that the causes are deeply embedded in our shared hemispheric history and are therefore not some distant problem in a foreign country, but in fact a transnational problem that includes the United States – not as a distant observer or passive victim that must now deal with thousands of unwanted children arriving at the southern border, but rather as an active historical participant in the circumstances that generated the problem.”

One line stuck out to me on page 67. “It’s lawyers that are desperately needed.” So, I studied for 4 months for my LSAT while working a full time traveling job. I did not go out. I studied 1-3 chapters per week. And took mock tests on Friday nights while my friends went out. I lived at the Madison public library and the Great Dane on Thursday nights after the gym where Chris, my favorite bartender, poured me beers as I poured over Logical Reasoning, Reading Comprehension, and Logic Games.  I fell asleep with the book on my lap and pillows stacked up behind me. I took my test on September 8^th and cried afterwards because my first test was finally over and I felt like I flunked it. I was both relieved and frustrated. The test commissioners were disorganized and using a clock from their MacBook that did not match the clock on the wall that we used for timing. She talked too quietly and I couldn’t hear her explanations and she rushed through the transitions to the point where I was flustered and confused. Not to mention I was surrounded by absolutely pretentious college kids whose parents were making them go to law school and had days upon days and hundreds of hours to study that I didn’t have (sorry I’m old and bitter) and it was game day 3 blocks away at Camp Randall and I could hear the band through the walls and it distracted me and 2 of my sections, I did not complete on time and had to guess. It was a complete fail on my part. I am still reeling about it and feel more dumb than I have felt in ages. But, I got my score and it was not as bad as it could have been. I could still technically get into law school with it. But, not where I want to go. And hello. We want scholarships. Because student debt is a nightmare (but that's an entire debate in itself). So, alas, I persist. After Christmas, I will be working with an LSAT tutor and purchasing more prep books that hone in on the areas where I faltered.  I will increase my studying escapades and will dedicate 6 hours a week to solely taking timed mock tests. I got knocked down but I will get up. Writing this review has revived me and I’m ready to do something more. I’m ready to make a difference. I’m ready to change my country, because I love my country, but I criticize it daily.