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New York Times Bestseller • Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today • Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography • Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family.

Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction • One of the New York Public Library’s Ten Best Books of the Year

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open Book Award

“I read Solito with my heart in my throat and did not burst into tears until the last sentence. What a person, what a writer, what a book.”—Emma Straub

“A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle.”—Dave Eggers

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews

Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.

Review

“A gripping memoir… Solito is special for many reasons, but the main one is Zamora’s voice and the energy of his vivid retelling of his journey . . . And that makes it required reading.”—Gabino Iglesias, NPR

“Zamora . . . recounts in absorbing detail the dangerous, weekslong journey he took from El Salvador to reunite with his parents in the United States when he was just 9.”—The New York Times

“The magic of this book lies not only in the beguiling voice of young Javier, or the harrowing journey and immense bravery of the migrants, or in the built-in hero’s journey of this narrative. It’s hard to reconcile the fact that this book hasn’t always been with us. How can something so essential and fundamental to the American story not already be part of our canon?”—San Francisco Chronicle

“An important, beautiful work.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Zamora’s [Solito] is a distinctly American memoir, and he tells a distinctly American story.”—The Nation

“A monumental accomplishment.”—Oprah Daily

“Crafted with stunning intimacy . . . you’ll feel so close to the boy [Zamora] was then that you’ll think about him long after the book is done. It’s impossible not to feel both immersed in and changed by this extraordinary book.”—Los Angeles Times

“Solito is a stone-cold masterpiece, an absolute masterpiece. I know I used that word twice. That’s how you know I mean it.”—Emma Straub

“A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle. With [Solito], Javier Zamora arrives to the forefront of essential American voices.”—Dave Eggers

“What Javier Zamora has accomplished in Solito feels miraculous. This is a pitch-perfect recapturing of the voice, consciousness, and emotions of [Zamora’s] nine-year-old self.”—Francisco Goldman

“An instant classic. . . Javier Zamora has elevated the ‘child migrant story’ to new literary heights.”—Jose Antonio Vargas

“A new landmark in the literature of migration, and in nonfiction writ large.”—Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River

“In luminous prose . . . with tenderness and searing honesty Zamora writes, for the first time, a Salvadoran account of what it takes to reach the border, cross it on foot, and survive. I cannot recommend this book enough, nor overstate its accomplishment.”—Carolyn Forche

“Solito is a revelation.”—Daniel Alarcón

“[A] beautifully wrought work that renders the migrant experience into a vivid, immediately accessible portrayal.”—Kirkus Review (starred review)

“A stirring portrait of the power of human connection . . . an immensely moving story.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter one

La Herradura, El Salvador

March 16, 1999

Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure. Like the one Simba goes on before he comes home.” Around that same time they sent me Aladdin, Jurassic Park, and The Lion King, alongside a Panasonic VHS player for my eighth birthday.

“Trip,” they say now as I’m talking to them at The Baker’s, where Abuelita Neli, Grandpa, and I go to call them—we don’t have a phone at home, but we do have a color TV, a brand-new fridge, and a fish tank.

“¡Javiercito!” Abuelita Neli waves her hand at me. She’s always called me that. I think my nickname, Chepito, reminds her too much of what the town calls Grandpa: Don Chepe.

“Your parents say you’ll soon be with them,” Abuelita says, and smiles, showing off her two top middle teeth lined in gold. Her dimples dig deeper into her round face. Tía Mali, who also has a round face, isn’t here, because she’s working at the clinic. She and Abuelita have been using the word more and more. Trip this, trip that. Trip trip trip. I can feel the trip in the soles of my feet. I see it in my dreams.

In some dreams I’m Superman, or I’m Goku, flying over fields, rivers, over El Salvador, over all the countries, over the people, towns, all the way to California, to my parents. I ring their bell. They open their huge door, tall and wide, made from the brownest wood, and I run to them. They show me their living room. Their huge TV. Their backyard with a swimming pool, a lawn, fruit trees, a mini soccer field, a white fence. I climb their marañón trees, eat their mangos, play in their garden . . .

Every night, between praying and sleeping, I lie in bed and think about them. ¿What type of bed do they sleep on? ¿Is it big? ¿Is it a waterbed like in the movies? ¿Are the sheets soft? I imagine cuddling right in the middle. The comfiest white sheets. Mom to my left, Dad to my right, a mosquito net like a crown covering all of us.

Whenever a plate breaks, whenever I find an eyelash, whenever I see a shooting star, I wish to be in that bed with both of them in La USA, eating orange sherbet ice cream. I never tell anyone—if I tell anyone my wish it won’t come true.

I have bad dreams también. Bad dreams of growing a beard with my parents still not here. Bad dreams where I’m not up there with them—¡and I’m thirty years old! Bad dreams of being chased by pirates, or running down a hill during a mudslide.

“The bad dreams, those you have to tell first thing in the morning so they don’t stay in your mind. And never in the kitchen, or else they get in your stomach. That’s how you get indigestion,” Mom told me, and I never forgot.

Trip. I’ve started using the word at school. I began telling my closest friends: “Fijáte vos, one day I’m taking a trip. Like a real-real game of hide-and-seek.”

In first grade, I was the only one who didn’t have both parents with me. Mali says they left because before I was born there was a war, and then there were no jobs. Now, most of my friends don’t have their dad or mom here either. A few lucky friends have left to be with their parents in La USA. Most left inside giant planes.

At recess, my friends and I talk about eating our first pepperoni pizza like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, eating lasagna like Garfield, eating McDonald’s, watching the new Star Wars inside a theater with air-conditioning, eating “popcorn” with butter. I’ve never tried any of these things except for pizza from Pizza Hut, and that was last Christmas.

“¿But will you miss me? ¿Will you?” my friends ask.

“Puesí,” I say, but I don’t really know.

I ask them if they will miss me. “Absolutely,” they say, because no one who’s left to La USA has ever come back to visit. Sometimes their grandma or grandpa will walk by on the street and we’ll ask them how So-and-So is, and they respond, “So-and-So says hi”—that’s the closest they come to remembering us. “Oh, gracias, doña, gracias, don. Tell them we say hi.” But we never hear from them again.

The Baker is still here. His wife and all six of his kids también. They look happy. I want what The Baker’s family has: everyone in the same room. All my friends and I want to be with our parents, where everything is new, fresh, where garbage is collected by trucks, where water comes out of silver faucets, where it snows the whitest snow, where people have snowball fights and cut real pine trees for Christmas—not spray-paint cotton branches in white like we do here.

It’s because our parents are not here and we’re not there that Mays and Junes are sad. For most of us, our grandparents are the ones who show up for Mother’s and Father’s Day assemblies. It’s not that we don’t love them. We do. I love Abuelita so much. I love her cooking. The way my face gets stuck in her curly, frizzy hair that she dyes black, her short hair that makes her look like a microphone, her hair that smells like pupusas when she hugs me. I love her two dimples when she smiles. Her wide and flat nose with its dark-brown mole in the middle that she has to check at the hospital every year to see it doesn’t get too big. And I love her fake eyebrows she draws thin with a pencil first thing in the morning.

I love my mom, también. I’ve never met my dad—or I have, but I don’t remember him. I was about to turn two when he left. He sounds nice over the phone. His voice is deep and raspy, but it’s still soft, like a sharp stone skipping over water. I always talk to him second, after I talk to Mom. I remember everything about her. Her harsh voice like a wave crashing when she got mad at me. Her breath like freshly cut cucumbers.

Now I talk to her first, and then she hands the phone to Dad. Sometimes I’m so shy with Dad, Mom has to be on the phone at the same time. Other times Tía Mali whispers things I’ve done that week to tell him.

They send pictures every few months, and in the pictures Dad looks kind and strong. I like his thick mustache. His thick black hair. His big teeth. The gold chain he wears over his shirt, his muscles showing. Everyone in town tells me stories about him, but I haven’t really asked him anything because I get shy when I hear his voice.

Now Grandpa is talking to them, trying to whisper something into the phone, trying to make it so I won’t hear. But I do hear. I’ve been listening. My hearing is good. It’s really good. I hear him whisper, “Don Dago,” then something else I can’t make out, then he blurts out, “By Mother’s Day.”

Don Dago is the coyote who took Mom to La USA four years ago. He’s been coming around the house more often. I can put two and two together. I’m my grade’s valedictorian; I get a diploma every year for being the best student.

Mother’s Day. Since kindergarten the nuns have made us embroider handkerchiefs with Feliz Día de la Madre or Feliz Día del Padre in blue or red thread. Every. Single. Year. At least the P’s are easier than M’s. In second grade, my friends and I started writing our grandparents’ names instead. It’s easier.

But this Mother’s Day will be different. ¡This is finally the year I see my parents! This year I will embroider Mom’s name on a handkerchief and deliver it to her—in person.

“He’ll get there before summer. He won’t be cold like you were in the mountains,” Grandpa tries to whisper, like I don’t know they’re talking about me. I hide my happiness, my smile, but it’s hard not to run around The Baker’s living room. Hard not to knock the tables over. Hard not to run the four blocks home. Hard not to run into the clinic where Tía Mali is working. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pretend once she gets off work at six p.m. But I do, I pretend, I walk back at Abuelita’s pace, holding her hand. Clutching it. Squeezing it until both our hands sweat and the sweat says: It’s happening. It’s finally happening.

Review:

4.8 out of 5

95.38% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down

A.P. · October 13, 2024

I was by turns gripped, mesmerized, moved, and horrified by this true story of a child's journey from El Salvador to the United States in the company of strangers from his country. I know a lot about the subject and this is one of the most moving and beautifully written accounts of the difficult journey to the U.S. I have read. Its beauty and power goes beyond the topic of migration to help us understand human compassion, selflessness, dedication, and hope as well as the darker themes of betrayal and self-interest. The author manages to put us there with his vivid descriptions of the landscapes and the way he brings alive for the reader his family in El Salvador and the people who accompanied and cared for him and others he encountered on his grueling journey. A classic telling of an important American experience.

5.0 out of 5 stars Rarely read a memoir: This is one I will recordar

I.K. · September 23, 2024

Raw and told from Javier’s 9 year old brutal 3 crossings to Las United States. He made it with help from 3, who were also crossing and became like family. This is a book I will recommend to many. Gifted writer and one strong human.

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story about a very hot topic

w. · June 5, 2024

This is a blow by blow account of a 9 year old's journey from El Salvador to the US and all that entails. It's eye opening and riveting at parts. Some slower passages and sometimes repetitive wording, but overall a great book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic

A.C. · September 20, 2024

Tremendous book. Wonderful writing. Beautifully brutal story. Shines new light on the migrant journey. Cannot recommend more highly. Will think about this book for a long time.

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring!

R. · October 3, 2024

I’ve never truly thought much about those who migrate for a better life. This story is so real! I felt so many emotions as I read each page. The thought of a 9 year old boy, walking with strangers through Central America, through Mexico, and up to California to join his parents who had already migrated to the US, is so foreign to most Americans. What life must be like in countries below our border, to go through that experience just to get to freedom is hard to imagine! I recommend this book to everyone!

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredible

S.C. · September 24, 2024

Such an incredibly written memoir that I believe everyone should read. Thank you Javier for sharing your story, and I too wish the best for every migrant who is trying to make their way to a better life.

5.0 out of 5 stars Book kept my interest!

B.T. · October 13, 2024

Excellent memoir of a harrowing experience. I bought a copy for one of my friends as well.

4.0 out of 5 stars Needs a sequel

E.C.I. · July 5, 2024

This is a story about an illegal immigrant—a story that every anti-immigration proponent should read. Javier Zamora is nine years old when he begins his journey from El Salvador to the U.S. He recounts the perils of his seven-week trek across land and sea as an adult looking back on the events that he says helped shape who he became.The book begins with a very defined goal–to be reunited with his mother and father, a father he has never met. Most stories about immigration are about men and women hoping to improve their lives by fleeing poverty and crime at home for the promises of a better future in America. The role of family is often a driving force in these stories, as it is here. Javier's relatives are back in El Salvador, his parents are in California, and he has a fake family of a mother and daughter who accompany him on his journey northbound.Javier doesn't dwell on the politics of immigration, whether legal or illegal. His only goal is to be reunited with his parents. He dreams of a large house with a pool, his own room, and a McDonald's on every corner. The trip north is full of peril, from the heat and lack of water and food to the possibility of being caught and sent home by police in Mexico or by border patrol agents along the U.S. border.I would have liked to have read more about his experiences after he crossed the border. Perhaps a second memoir is in the works.

Necessário para se entender a sociedade norte-americana.

i.o.d.s. · March 1, 2024

Memórias escritas com verdade e oportunas visões dos EUA.

Could not put it down

N.T.K.M. · October 14, 2023

Compelling true story of a young El Salvadoran boy who migrated to reunite with his parents in the US. Beautifully written and an important story to be told.

FANTASTICO

P. · April 25, 2023

Creo que TODOS debemos leer este libro y comprender por lo que pasan los migrantes, el libro te hace empatico . Una maravilla.

Una historia única y muy emocionante

O.P. · February 18, 2024

Solito es un libro que te roba la atención desde el primer momento hasta el final. No pensé llorar pero he terminado de leer el libro llorando. Como salvadoreño le agradezco a Javier Zamora por compartir su historia, en medio de cada relato hubiera querido ser parte del grupo para poder ayudar a Javiercito y darle un abrazo cuando se sentía solo, en serio es muy emocionante su historia.

A great read

G. · April 3, 2023

The author, as narrator of this memoir, stays in your mind long after the book is finished. Also, many of the characters, especially his auntie, grandparents, and the couple and their daughter who kindly befriended him on their harrowing journey. It seems to his regret, that they lost touch with each other. Sincerely hope they find each other again and that life goes well for all.A book that educates, that may help change peoples perspective on a heartbreaking problem faced by many

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Solito: A Memoir

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Brand: Random House Publishing Group
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