Few stories are as immersively told as poet Javier Zamora’s beautiful memoir, Solito, which recounts his harrowing journey at the age of nine from El Salvador to San Rafael in Marin County, with his parents’ phone number and address written in tiny letters in his clothing. With plain, direct language, Zamora submerges us within the perspective of his younger self, Chepito, a self too innocent to ponder the dangers he will encounter or exaggerate the circumstances of survival. He is able to recognize an element of danger when it appears in the coyote who takes him and a group of mostly strangers into the United States, but is too young—and too trapped in a complicated situation generated by the system—to act. Indeed, Zamora’s voice is stripped of all that is conceptual or editorial, and it’s this disarming immediacy that allows readers to feel what he, as a child, feels. This direct line to Zamora’s experience is a profoundly affecting work that all Californians—really, all people—should read.
‘Solito’
Javier Zamora’s memoir is the California Book Club’s June 2024 selection.
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