SuitabookWe Are Not from Here
Jenny Torres Sanchez
- Reading
- Read in manageable sections and check in after intense chapters. Discuss the characters’ humanity and circumstances without treating one fictional journey as representing every migrant experience.
- Themes
- Survival amid coercion and violence: Three Guatemalan teenagers flee after murder, threats and coercion, travelling towards the United States through a dangerous route. The narrative centres the pressures and dangers surrounding their flight rather than presenting migration as an uncomplicated adventure.
- Friendship as support: Pulga, Chico and Pequeña undertake the journey together and support and encourage one another through fear and danger. The book presents this favourably.
- Migrant experience and perspective: The novel follows young people leaving Guatemala through Mexico, using alternating perspectives and including Spanish words and phrases. It foregrounds the lived experience of people fleeing violence and offers a specific, emotionally intense perspective on migration.
- Worth knowing
- Before reading, consider whether the reader is prepared for graphic violence, murder, sexual violence, childbirth, bereavement, strong language, gang involvement and smoking.