Enrique’s Journey written by Sonia Nazario is a work of non-fiction that follows the journey of a young Central American boy to find his mother Lourdes, who left him at the age of five. Before Nazario introduces Enrique she discusses the experiences she put herself through to gain a better understanding of the travels a migrant child and adult go through in their conquest to make it to the United States. While going through the trials that many migrants put themselves through Nazario learns the stories of different migrants and begins her search for a migrant child to bring attention to their story and create awareness about the situation children migrating are enduring to find their mothers in the United States. Nazario traces Enrique’s steps to experience his full journey and to describe the details in depth upon writing about the journey Enrique took to find his mother in the United States.
Hardships are : test that prove what you really are made of . You’re either a person who succeeds in the attempt or fails. Are you willing to learn from , and overcome problems of everyday life. In life with no struggles their no gain because we learn from our struggles.
I believe that it's safe to say I enjoyed the read and would recommend it to other readers around the school. However, constantly it went against my thinking and made me angry quite often. What made me so angry and upset was how often it skipped over things such as the law and tried to hide and cover the fact that what Enrique and his mother were doing throughout the whole story was illegal. The author constantly tried to hide the fact of the truth and try to make people forget about the bad side of what they were doing, even though they had good intentions, it still is hiding the truth in a sense when as a journalist you should say only the truth and the whole story. Not try to hide things from the reader to essentially manipulate them. Another example of this hiding is when she constantly used the word “migrants” instead of “immigrants” when people had directly left one country into another meaning immigrants not migrants, essentially again I think she did this because the word immigrants looks bad because often times immigrants have tainted the word by their actions. Because of all these things, I think it was way to much of a political agenda to appeal more to illegal immigrants. The story did spark some emotion in me as what happens to Enrique on his journey is truly sad and makes you feel sympathetic for him. He has to go through lots of beatings and constantly being taken advantage of throughout his whole journey. What made me feel hopeful or Enrique is that he was able to eventually see his mother, and that hopefully more kids can be reunited with their mothers or families, I’d prefer though that it was legally but I am happy for Enrique that he was able to see his mother. I don't think that Enrique’s Journey shouldn't be a necessary read as I think it tells a good story yet has no thing that really is learned from it, as lots of times what it is sharing goes
Enrique’s journey from Honduras to the U.S. unveils the innate loyalty of a loving child to their mother and presents the dangers that a migrant faces on the road with consistent angst; nevertheless, it supports the idea that compassion shown by some strangers can boost the retreating confidence within a person. In Sonia Nazario’s “Enrique’s Journey,” he seeks the beacon of light that all migrants hope to encounter; “El Norte.” Like many children before him, it is the answer to the problems of a hard life. While being hunted down “like animals” leading to “seven futile attempts,” he is
This relates to the human rights issue of immigrants due to enrique’s mom heading for the states to better her life. She was a maid , so therefore she didn’t really make that much money. She hoped for a better life and she thought she would be able to do this by moving to the states. In her eyes the only way to do this was heading for america.
Before that can be answered I think we have to look at why this book in specifics was chosen to be the common reader. This book in itself is a perfect example of this year’s public affairs mission theme. That is “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness: Perspectives on Self-Government.” Enrique’s Journey is nothing but a story of someone’s life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Enrique pursues his own goal of finding his mother after she had to leave to create a better life for him and his sister (Nazario). It also shows how he framed the rest of his life based solely on that one decision. After reading the common reader I have a new found respect for those who journey to discover their own American dream. I also have a higher hope knowing that the American dream can be reached, even if it is not specifically my own version of
The hardships one would encounter in their lives have become a part of our society, because they act as stepping stones to build ourselves with trials to reach any higher ground. It’s ready is the best, and worst possible actions we have done to ourselves.
I can only imagine what immigrating to america is like for these families, everyday children my age and younger are risking their lives to come to America and It really makes me appreciate how much I have. For Lourdes, Enrique, and Maria Isabel in Enrique’s Journey they must make the hard decision of leaving everything they grew up with in Honduras to come to america for a better life. Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, could no longer afford to feed and send her children to school and was struggling to make money with her job. “Lordes can think of only one place that offers hope… Lourdes has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States, and make money and send it home.” (p.20) Lourdes decides to make the trip because it
The novel, ‘Enrique’s Journey’ follows the difficult quest of a Honduras boy in search for his mother after she is forced to leave her starving family in order to find work in the United States. Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, knows she will not be able to afford to send them to school, and they would be forced to grow up in poverty as she did when she was a child. Finding work in the United States was Lourdes only way of being able to send money in order to support her family. As a boy, Enrique and his sister Belky are were also split apart from one another, leaving Enrique completely alone. Over the years, Enrique often shuffled from one home to another, eventually spending most of his young life with is grandmother, while his sister sets out to get her education and is well cared for by their aunt. After the depression sinks in for Enrique, he turns to drugs for comfort and begins to rebel against his grandmother. She eventually kicks him out and he is faced with the sobering reality of being completely alone. Frustrated with his mother, and the circumstances he faces in life, Enrique embarks on a
According to Jie Zong, Jeanne Batalova, and Jeffrey Hallock, the U.S. has been “the top destination for international migrants since the least 1960, with one fifth of the world’s migrants living there as of 2017.” It is well known to numerous people that hundreds of immigrants travel from all over the world to the United States, but what exactly does it take for many of them to get here? One such author, Sonia Nazario, manages to capture the gruesome journey of one immigrant boy, who like many others, is attempting to make it to the United States. The author reveals the brutal realities and the main reason countless of young children make their way to America. In her novel, Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario utilizes pathos, reputable sources,
In the novel Enrique’s Journey, Sonia Nazario demonstrates the onerous journey of illegal immigrants. Sonia Nazario aims for the readers to make them understand what most of the immigrants go through during their journey to the United States. By appealing to ethos and pathos throughout the book, Sonia Nazario portrays the path that Enrique undergoes to reunite with his mother.
According to President Obama (2014), “If we are serious about economic growth, it is time to heed the call of business leaders, labor leaders, faith leaders, and law enforcement- and fix our broken immigration system. Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have acted. I know that members of both parties in the House want to do the same” (President Obama, 2014). The United States of American has long been the safe haven for those who seek to escape poverty, hunger, torture, and oppression in their home countries. According to the film, The Other Side of Immigration (2009), in 1970, the United States housed 750,000 immigrants and as of 2009, there are
Each year, thousands of Central American immigrants embark on a dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States. Many of these migrants include young children searching for their mothers who abandoned them. In Enrique’s Journey, former Los Angeles Times reporter, Sonia Nazario, recounts the compelling story of Enrique, a young Honduran boy desperate to reunite with his mother. Thanks to her thorough reporting, Nazario gives readers a vivid and detailed account of the hardships faced by these migrant children.
I never expected Enrique’s Journey to be such a personal work. Being a journalistic book, I expected a lot of research in it, but not to the level Nazario’s gone to. Definitely, the way she introduced herself into the enduring situations that migrants go through when they try to reach the US gave me a new perspective of what to expect from the book. She comes from a migrant family too, so she can sort of relate to the characters in the book. However, as she confesses herself, her journey was nowhere as arduous as what these children go through to find their mothers. And the way in which she involved herself into the situation increases her empathy for Enrique en other numberless children.
Enrique’s Journey focuses and sheds more light and understanding on the aspects and challenges of extreme poverty, family abandonment, systematic issues of an immigration system and what one has to go through in the face of adversity. The book centers on Enrique who starts out as a young boy living in extreme poverty in Honduras with his family. Enrique is an older adolescent, Hispanic, poverty economic status, unemployed most times, and is in a relationship with one child. This case study will further look at Enrique’s personal experiences from a young child up to young adulthood and how that has shaped his development has a person from coming from such difficult environmental circumstances. This will also look at the different environmental perspectives in the micro, mezzo and macro level when pertaining to effects on human behavior.