My Side of the River - Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

 My Side of the River - Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

Pub. Date:Feb. 13, 2024

She read

 

Elizabeth Carillo Gutierrez is a first generation Mexican American. When she was fifteen, her parents, who had Visas, returned to Mexico to renew them.  Denied renewal, the family also had her younger brother, a citizen of the US, brought back to Mexico. Elizabeth was left to live with a family who virtually ignored her, including denying her food, while she strove to do well in school and get accepted into a good college.  Despite all her tribulations, she was accepted at an Ivy League school, but was never far away from the strife, prejudice, pressure and sometimes panic that resulted from the present day immigrant experience in America.

I am not a big fan of memoirs, but this is a wonderful read.  Simultaneously heart breaking and heart warming, it provides good insight into the unfortunate immigrant experience of so many children separated from their parents and siblings.  Readers see the way immigrants are scapegoated when all they want to do is work hard and take care of their families, hoping for a better future for their children,  the separation of innocent, hardworking families, the prejudice, the exploitation, the dehumanization, and the very real effects on two children. Here also are the laws that have erased the acknowledgment of the true history and the culture of so many people,  the politics behind immigration, the blockage of passing any meaningful changes. 

I am especially pleased that the author points out the land grab by the United States and indigenous displacement that occurred in Mexico in the early 1800s. Not to many people know about this, yet they should. She also documents the effects of cultural machismo on a family.

I would recommend this book for book clubs everywhere; there is so much that should be learned about and discussed.

Thanks to #netgalley and @stmartinspress for the ARC. 

*****