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Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother Paperback – January 2, 2007

by Sonia Nazario (Author, Afterword)

4.5 2,776 ratings

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An astonishing story that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about immigration reform in the United States, now updated with a new Epilogue and Afterword, photos of Enrique and his family, an author interview, and more—the definitive edition of a classic of contemporary America

Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, this page-turner about the power of family is a popular text in classrooms and a touchstone for communities across the country to engage in meaningful discussions about this essential American subject.

Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. As Isabel Allende writes: “This is a twenty-first-century Odyssey. If you are going to read only one nonfiction book this year, it has to be this one.”

Praise for Enrique’s Journey

“Magnificent . . . Enrique’s Journey is about love. It’s about family. It’s about home.”—The Washington Post Book World

“[A] searing report from the immigration frontlines . . . as harrowing as it is heartbreaking.”—People (four stars)

“Stunning . . . As an adventure narrative alone, Enrique’s Journey is a worthy read. . . . Nazario’s impressive piece of reporting [turns] the current immigration controversy from a political story into a personal one.”—Entertainment Weekly

“Gripping and harrowing . . . a story begging to be told.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“[A] prodigious feat of reporting . . . [Sonia Nazario is] amazingly thorough and intrepid.”—Newsday

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“A remarkable feat of immersion reporting . . . [Gives] the immigrant . . . flesh and bone, history and voice . . . The kind of story we have told ourselves throughout history, a story we still need to hear.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Compelling . . . Nazario doesn’t pull any punches.”—Dallas Morning News

“A meticulously documented account of an epic journey, one undertaken by thousands of children every year . . . [Nazario] covers both positive and negative effects of immigration, illuminating the problem’s complexity. . . . In telling Enrique’s story [she] bears witness for us all.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Compelling . . . drama, pathos, and [the] hot topic of illegal immigration.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Astounding . . . I am unaware of any journalist who has voluntarily placed herself in greater peril to nail down a story than did Nazario.”—Steve Weinberg, former executive director of investigative reporters and editors, The Baltimore Sun

“A story of heartache, brutality, and love deferred that is near mythic in its power.”—Los Angeles Magazine

“[Enrique’s Journey] personifies one of the greatest migrations in history. . . . Much of the book is a thriller . . . a 12,000-mile journey worthy of an Indiana Jones movie.”—The Orange County Register

“Riveting . . . expert reporting . . . Nazario puts a human face upon a major issue. . . . The breadth and depth of [her] research is astounding.”—The Plain Dealer

“A heart-racing and heart-rending trip.”—The Daily Nonpareil

“A story readers won’t soon forget.”—Tu Ciudad

“Gripping . . . astounding . . . viscerally conveys the experience of illegal immigration from Central America . . . [Nazario] has crafted her findings into a story that is at once moving and polemical.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“This portrait of poverty and family ties has the potential to reshape American conversations about immigration.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Insightful and beautifully written and sheds a great deal of light on the horrific journeys immigrants risk to find a better life. Highly recommended.”—Library Journal

“This is a harrowing odyssey that depicts one young man's attempts to reunite with his mother and the social and economic issues involved in illegal immigration.”—Booklist

“Gripping, heroic and important, Enrique's Journey captures the heart. Most Americans or their forebears came to the United States from other countries. They experienced difficult journeys and wrenching family separations-all in the hope of finding a better life in this new land. Enrique's story is our story, beautifully told.”—Edward James Olmos

About the Author

Sonia Nazario, a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has spent more than two decades reporting and writing about social issues, earning her dozens of national awards. The newspaper series upon which this book is based won the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, and the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards. Nazario grew up in Kansas and Argentina. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The boy does not understand.

His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do.

Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel, and finally the emptiness.

What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is openly affectionate. “Dame pico, mami. Give me a kiss, Mom,” he pleads, over and over, pursing his lips. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. “Mira, mami. Look, Mom,” he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.

Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is five years old.

They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is seven. She’s never been able to buy them a toy or a birthday cake. Lourdes, twenty-four, scrubs other people’s laundry in a muddy river. She goes door to door, selling tortillas, used clothes, and plantains.

She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique’s playground.

They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question.

Lourdes knows of only one place that offers hope. As a seven-year-old child, delivering tortillas her mother made to
wealthy homes, she glimpsed this place on other people’s television screens. The flickering images were a far cry from Lourdes’ s childhood home: a two-room shack made of wooden slats, its flimsy tin roof weighted down with rocks, the only bathroom a clump of bushes outside. On television, she saw New York City’s spectacular skyline, Las Vegas’s shimmering lights, Disneyland’s magic castle.

Lourdes has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States and make money and send it home. She will be gone for one year—less, with luck—or she will bring her children to be with her. It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still she feels guilty.

She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly. Then she turns to her own sister. If she watches over Belky, she will get a set of gold fingernails from el Norte.

But Lourdes cannot face Enrique. He will remember only one thing that she says to him: “Don’t forget to go to church this afternoon.”

It is January 29, 1989. His mother steps off the porch.

She walks away.

“¿Dónde está mi mami?” Enrique cries, over and over. “Where is my mom?”

His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique’s fate.

As a teenager—indeed, still a child—he will set out for the United States on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families.

Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75 percent are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers’ arms.

The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America. They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. The rest travel alone. They are cold, hungry, and helpless. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits, and gang members deported from the United States. A University of Houston study found that most are robbed, beaten, or raped, usually several times. Some are killed.

They set out with little or no money. Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump onto and off of the moving train cars. Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart.

They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Often, they don’t know where or when they’ll get their next meal. Some go days without eating. If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands, and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel. At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks. They sleep in trees, in tall grass, or in beds made of leaves.

Some are very young. Mexican rail workers have encountered seven-year-olds on their way to find their mothers. A policeman discovered a nine-year-old boy near the downtown Los Angeles tracks. “I’m looking for my mother,” he said. The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before. He had been guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived. He had asked everyone, “How do I get to San Francisco?”

Typically, the children are teenagers. Some were babies when their mothers left; they know them only by pictures sent home. Others, a bit older, struggle to hold on to memories: One has slept in her mother’ s bed; another has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes. One is old enough to remember his mother’s face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick, how her dress felt as she stood at the stove pattingtortillas.

Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers. They remember how their mothers fed and bathed them, how they walked them to kindergarten. In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although in the United States the women struggle to pay rent and eat, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem. Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.

CONFUSION

Enrique is bewildered. Who will take care of him now that his mother is gone? Lourdes, unable to burden her family with both of her children, has split them up. Belky stayed with Lourdes’s mother and sisters. For two years, Enrique is entrusted to his father, Luis, from whom his mother has been separated for three years.

Enrique clings to his daddy, who dotes on him. A bricklayer, his father takes Enrique to work and lets him help mix mortar. They live with Enrique’ s grandmother. His father shares a bed with him and brings him apples and clothes. Every month, Enrique misses his mother less, but he does not forget her. “When is she coming for me?” he asks.

Lourdes and her smuggler cross Mexico on buses. Each afternoon, she closes her eyes. She imagines herself home at dusk, playing with Enrique under a eucalyptus tree in her mother’s front yard. Enrique straddles a broom, pretending it’s a donkey, trotting around the muddy yard. Each afternoon, she presses her eyes shut and tears fall. Each afternoon, she reminds herself that if she is weak, if she does not keep moving forward, her children will pay.

Lourdes crosses into the United States in one of the largest immigrant waves in the country’s history. She enters at night through a rat-infested Tijuana sewage tunnel and makes her way to Los Angeles. There, in the downtown Greyhound bus terminal, the smuggler tells Lourdes to wait while he runs a quick errand. He’ll be right back. The smuggler has been paid to take her all the way to Miami.

Three days pass. Lourdes musses her filthy hair, trying to blend in with the homeless and not get singled out by police. She prays to God to put someone before her, to show her the way. Whom can she reach out to for help? Starved, she starts walking. East of downtown, Lourdes spots a small factory. On the loading dock, under a gray tin roof, women sort red and green tomatoes. She begs for work. As she puts tomatoes into boxes, she hallucinates that she is slicing open a juicy one and sprinkling it with salt. The boss pays her $14 for two hours’ work. Lourdes’s brother has a friend in Los Angeles who helps Lourdes get a fake Social Security card and a job.

She moves in with a Beverly Hills couple to take care of their three-year-old daughter. Their spacious home has carpet on the floors and mahogany panels on the walls. Her employers are kind. They pay her $125 a week. She gets nights and weekends off. Maybe, Lourdes tells herself—if she stays long enough—they will help her become legal.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Trade Paperbacks; Later Printing edition (January 2, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 299 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812971787
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812971781
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 12 years and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 830L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.18 x 0.89 x 7.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #32,903 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11 in Children's Studies Social Science (Books)
- #15 in Emigration & Immigration Studies (Books)
- #18 in Emigrants & Immigrants Biographies

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Sonia Nazario

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Sonia Nazario (www.enriquesjourney.com) has spent 20 years reporting and writing about social issues, most recently as a projects reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Her stories have tackled some of this country's most intractable problems: hunger, drug addiction, immigration.

She has won numerous national journalism and book awards and has been named among the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and a "trendsetter" by Hispanic Magazine. In 2012 Columbia Journalism Review named Nazario among "40 women who changed the media business in the past 40 years."

In 2003, her story of a Honduran boy's struggle to find his mother in the U.S., entitled "Enrique's Journey," won more than a dozen awards, among them the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, the George Polk Award for International Reporting, the Grand Prize of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and the National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists Guillermo Martinez-Marquez Award for Overall Excellence.

Expanded into a book, Enrique's Journey became a national bestseller, won two book awards, and is required reading for all incoming freshmen at 21 universities and dozens of high schools nationwide. It has been selected as a "One City, One Book" read by five cities, and is being made into a movie by Lifetime.

In 1998, Nazario was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for a series on children of drug addicted parents. And in 1994, she won a George Polk Award for Local Reporting for a series about hunger among schoolchildren in California.

Nazario, who grew up in Kansas and in Argentina, has written extensively from Latin America and about Latinos in the United States. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master's degree in Latin American studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She began her career at the Wall Street Journal, where she reported from four bureaus: New York, Atlanta, Miami, and Los Angeles. In 1993, she joined the Los Angeles Times. She is now at work on her second book.

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(ajk) avid reader

Powerful and informative read

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2017

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"Enrique's Journey" by Sonia Nazario.

What a powerful and informative read. The novel is engaging and one that is hard to put down. As an adult, I was interested in what the young adult version of this novel would encompass and how it differed from the adult version. With a few exceptions, there are not a lot of changes between the two.

Sonia Nazario took the story of one young man who was born and raised in Honduras. At age five, he was still a very clingy youngster with his mother, and didn't like for her to be out of sight for long. The day she walked away from him and his older sister to try to make it to the US so that she could better provide for her family was the hardest day for her and a scarring day mentally, emotionally, and psychologically for her children, particularly her son.

Around the age of 17, Enrique decided he was going to go find his mother. Despite several set backs, deportations, beatings, and lack of food, water and ways to remain clean, he finally made it. The story of his journey over the 8 months he continually tried to make it to the US and finally making it, is harrowing, interesting, and engaging. With so much information passed along from him, family members, and others who attempt this journey, the story of one migrant becomes the story of so many migrants/immigrants.

There are so many pros and cons in regard to immigration and the reasons one does immigrate and the reasons one stays behind. The author uses past and current data, as well as the verbal views of others, in examining these. She also examines how the how the ebb and flow of need in the US affects our "acceptance" of those who illegally cross our borders.

The author examines how many individuals and different groups in the US view immigration, what states have been more against it and thus do what they can to deport them while others find they benefit from those that have emigrated to their state. The issue of health care, jobs, taxes, racism, acceptance, and how to support the countries from which so many flee, are also addressed with the idea the reducing these harrowing journeys and keeping families together can be achieved. She also examines how wars, gang and other factors make staying in those countries, even with jobs and stability, make it hard to remain in their original countries.

The author writes succinctly and fairly. She tells the story well from all of the individual's perspectives. She examines the effects of Enrique's mother leaving had on him and how his leaving his family had on them. Finding their loved ones is not always easy. Reunification can be difficult and full of anger, resentment and misunderstanding. The individual who leaves often makes promises or statements they cannot follow through with, which adds to the toll it takes on the children and family members left behind.

Sonia Nazario has written a timely, poignant, moving, and informative novel that is important for all individuals to read, male and female, age 12 and older.

Rating: 4.8
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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ana

it is a good story!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on December 4, 2013

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Enrique’s Journey
Summary
Enrique’s Journey by Sonia Nazario tells a odyssey of a Honduran boy named Enrique who was born in Tegucigalpa Honduras. He lives with his mother Lourdes and his sister Belky. Enrique’s father has long left; since Lourdes hardly can provide food for her children, she decides to leave for the United States to earn money to send back to her children. Enrique and Belky become separated; Enrique stays with his father and Belky with Lourdes’s mother and sister. Ever since his mother left, Enrique misses his mother and always asks when she is coming back. Meanwhile, Lourdes is living in California, misses her children but continues to provide for them. While Lourdes tries many jobs, she meets Santos, becomes pregnant and gives birth to Diana. Enrique goes through difficult time as well. He goes through a series of rejections. First his mother, next his father, and then his grandmother, finally his uncle. Enrique’s only dream is to be with his mother once again, and so he set out on a journey in search for his mother.
Enrique makes numerous attempts to get north and on his seventh, he is found bleeding and naked. Enrique is able to escape from the people who attacked him on the train and stole everything he had, including his mother’s telephone number, Enrique receives help from a mayor, and then, other people help him and recommend him to not risk it again. Many young people have died trying to get to the USA riding on top of train, which is not safe. Their families never learn what happens with their loved ones. However, Enrique still desires to travel north to look for his mom. Enrique tries again using his prior experience. However, he is caught by the police in Tapachula, and taken to jail. He escapes and makes it to the train, reaches Chiapas in “el Tren devorador” which is known as the train Devours, which is one of the hardest part, so Enrique is proud of himself.
In Veracruz, Enrique sees the Jesus’ statue, most of the migrants that are on top of the train bend down and say a prayer. Enrique does not think he should do it because all of the things that he has done in the past. On his journey trough the state of Oaxaca and Veracruz, Enrique discovers that people there are nice to migrants; most of them give the immigrants clothes and food. Also the priests at the parishes encourage the members to help the migrants so they can get to the destination safely. The train enters a few tunnels, El Mexicano is the longest, the diesel smoke rises and the migrants had a hard time, Enrique’s face and arms turn gray. In Mexico City, everything changes, people from there are scare of the migrants, they think that migrants are all bandits. Now Enrique has to hide from the state police and the people that live in la Lecheria. Back in the train, he felts as sleep. Enrique and few more boys get caught by the police that bring them to their jefe, he checks them and luckily lets them re board the train and tell them to get off the train before San Luis Potosi. Once there, Enrique works a little to get some money for food and for the rest of his trip. In Nuevo Laredo, Enrique finds a camp for migrants, he feels safe there. However, it is not the safest places to be, there is all kind of things going around like drugs, criminals, smuggling network, etc.
Enrique does not forget about his mom. One late afternoon, Enrique is able to get his mom phone number. He collect calls her. He feels her love, Enrique tells his mom that he is in Nuevo Laredo and that he needs to pay a smuggler to help him to cross the river. After el Tirano helped Enrique to cross the river and get to the USA, Lourdes’s husband gets Enrique and drives him to see his mom in North Carolina. Happiness did not last too long. Lourdes want it to tell Enrique what to do and how to do it, but Enrique did not like it, their confrontation stared getting very often and Enrique started to spend his money in drugs, alcohol instead of sending it to his daughter in Honduras. Time passes by and Enrique decides to move out of the house. He tries to get his live back on track by saving money for a smuggler to bring Maria Isabel to the USA. Maria Isabel Travels north with a smuggler, with her there are more immigrant traveling. Jasmin, Enrique and Maria Isabel daughter’s stays with Belky Enrique’s sister.
Enrique and Lourdes are invited to participate in a show call “Don Francisco”. It is very popular in Latin America. Don Francisco asks Enrique about his pass as well as Lourdes, also he asks Enrique why he wanted to come to the United States and by the end, Don Francisco tells Lourdes that “he knows that one of Lourdes biggest dream is to see her daughter Belky after not seeing her for seventeen years”. Lourdes voice gets tight. Then through the same door that Enrique and Lourdes used moments before, Belky enters. This was the first time that Lourdes and her three children have been together. After few days, Belky goes back to Honduras were her baby son and husband are waiting for her return.

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Pen Name

Came fast and in good condition

Reviewed in Canada on February 3, 2021

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Came fast and in good condition

adasrig

Yess

Reviewed in Italy on February 13, 2022

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Tutto ok

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Rose Angelica Moreno

Enrique's Journey

Reviewed in Mexico on January 31, 2019

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La larga odisea de Enrique para llegar al lado de su madre es una verdadera pesadilla, pero es importante ponerse en los zapatos de estos desesperados emigrantes que pasan por nuestro país. Y también ver que no es un "sueño" el emigrar a un país que los explota, maltrata y influye en la pobreza de todo Latinoamérica.

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Letycia de Resende janot pacheco

Estória triste mas muito ilustrativa do problema imigratório

Reviewed in Brazil on September 12, 2018

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A estória contada no livro sobre a vida real de uma criança abandonada pelos pais mostra de forma clara os impactos negativos da pobreza na América Latina. Mostra também que, além de destroçar vidas, a pobreza empurra adultos a emigrarem para os Estados Unidos em busca de melhores condições financeiras, deixando seus filhos aos cuidados de parentes ou conhecidos. São essas crianças, de certa forma abandonadas, que buscam desesperadamente cruzar a fronteira para encontrarem os pais que os deixaram. Forma-se assim um ciclo de misérias humanas, já que a travessia é extremamente perigosa e deixa marcas de violência e às vezes de morte. Sem entrar no julgamento das ações desses pais, a verdade mostrada é que não há final feliz nessas estórias, mesmo quando filhos e pais se reunem. O livro descreve com honestidade e sensibilidade as partes tristes dessa caminhada do personagem Enrique, mas também mostra lados bonitos do ser humano, principalmente daqueles que ajudam e salvam as vidas das crianças que se arriscam nessa travessia.

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Yoel Gonzalez Fernandez

Lectura recomendada

Reviewed in Spain on April 26, 2018

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Gran libro de non-fiction. La portada es muy bonita y la edición de tapa blanda es de calidad. Sin duda recomendado

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