the festival. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> the san antonio book festival continues now with an author discussion on immigration. [inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> i think we'll go ahead and start. good morning, everyone. good morning. welcome to the san antonio book festival. we encourage attendees to use the social media with the hashtag sa book fest. thank you for joining us this morning, and thank you to the san antonio public library and to the southwest school of art and craft for sharing their space with us. a portion from the proceeds of

book sales do benefit the san antonio public library foundation and directly after this session our authors will be signing in the barnes & noble book tent, which is just outside on augusta street. this morning our session is entitled "when you can't go home: the making of american lives." lori markhamm is the writer based in berkeley, california, focusing on issues related to youth migration and the environment. her work has appeared in outlets including vice, orion, the new yorker.com, the guardian and the virginia quarterly review where she ises a contributing editor. for over a daled, she has worked -- a decades, she has worked in the field of immigration education.

natalia sylvester is the author of "everyone knows you go home." she was born in lima, peru, and came to the united states at age 4. as a child, she spent time in florida, in the rio grande valley in texas before her family et down roots -- set down roots in miami where she received a ba from the university of miami. a former magazine editor, she now works as a freelance writer in texas and as a faculty member of the low residency program at regis, university. her debut novel, "chasing the sun," was chosen as a book of the month by the national latino book club. please help me welcome natalia and lauren. [applause] we want to start by introducing the topic of these texts.

in 2008 the u.s. department of justice board of immigration appeals created a precedent when it ruled that young persons who are perceived -- keyword perceived -- to be affiliated with gangs did not constitute an eligible social group under asylum law. many families flee their countries due to violence, and many send their children when it is the only option versus death. this phenomenon creates the terms with we hear on the news; unaccompanied alien children, unaccompanied minor crisis, child exodus. in the faraway brothers, lauren markham asks why is it that our national headlines rethe come -- reduce the complexity to binary politics. her work seeks to answer the more nuanced questions about why immigrants leave their country, about the struggles they endure

and about the challenges they face adjusting in a new home. in a new country. she chronicles the journey of a couple as they make their way to california from el salvador. in everyone knows you go home, natalia sylvester asks who protects the invisible. newlyweds martin and isabelle take their nephew, eduardo, who risks his life on the beast to make his home with them in the rio grande valley of texas. i want to start by asking our authors, what are the series of ifs an unaccompanied minor faces, especially when they're nearing 18 years of age as is the case in both of these texts? lauren, you call 18 the line in the sand of life. so what kind of ifs come up for these my grants? my grants? >> well, i think, you know, that's such a great question.

thank you for that generous introduction too. i think the ifs start long before young people come into the united states, really any immigrant comes into the united states. for, you know, the young people that i'm writing about it's very similar case to ed eduardo thats the protagonist. these are young people who are traveling alone from their home countries without -- and they're crossing into the united states without papers and not in the custody of their parents. and that's what the government calls unaccompanied alien children, border patrol likes to call them juvies for short. so the series of ifs really start back home, right? if i leave home, where will i go? if i leave home, who will take care of me? if i leave home, how will i pay for that journey? and if i take out a debt, am i putting my family at risk for taking out that kind of money? what will happen to me along the way? who will protect me? and then once they come into the

united states if they're apprehended which is actually a key difference in what happens at first in my book and in eduardo's case in natalia's book, you know, if a young person is apprehended which the two young men i write about are, they are put into the sort of flailing and failing immigration system. they're put into detention, and they're placed immediately into deportation proceedings. so they have to figure out how to fight their case, how to fight their case without a lawyer. they're not provided lawyers -- in immigration court you're not provided lawyers by the u.s. government, so you have to find a lawyer by yourself which is really challenging especially if you're in detention and especially if you're a young person trying to figure out how to navigate things. so the thing with the 18-year-old line in the sand is you qualify for certain things if you are under 18 that you don't the day that you turn 18. you do not qualify more those

statuses anymore. for example, special immigrant juvenile status is one of those that, depending on the state, you really have to apply for that status before your 18th birthday. the other thing is if you're detained as a young person under the age of 18 and you are still in detention on your 18th birthday, there are many cases of you're in youth detention facilities and border patrol or i.c.e. comes and picks you up on your 18th birthday and taken to an adult detention facility, and you have fewer legal resources and protections just based on the tact that yesterday -- the fact that yesterday i was 17 and today i'm 18. >> i think, i don't know what else to add to that other than like, for me, when i was writing about eduardo's character, i had done a lot of research and learned a lot about the process. one things that struck me was the way the conversation went when i interviewed some of the immigration lawyers, that if

kept coming up. it was more like, well, if he went through these kind of situations, then he might have more options. and what it felt like is the more you've suffered, the more options you you have. but that suffering needed to be wrapped up in this very quantifiable package which it so often is not in order for this to be able to be presented in court and to have a chance. and that really struck me as such a very sad way to look at the experience of a person, that we really -- that you can say that one person is more deserving than another based on, like, well, you know, was their father a drug addict, were they dead, were they abusive. like all these check marks kind of made throughout that process. and so i really just wanted to -- like, for me, as a fiction writer i also wanted to be able to look beyond that paperwork and just see the person and all the different experiences that

they're bringing and look at the person as a whole and not just their suffering. also, like, the joy that we we all experience, the triumphs, survival. because i do think that, like, the way that our system works now, and even just the national conversation is very much focused on the suffering and the trauma which is, obviously, a very large part of it. but when we talk about the real stories here, they're so much more rich than that. and i feel like they need, that they deserve to be heard in all their complexities and all their humanity. >> and i should just add to that, you know, one of the things that was so compelling about eduardo's character in "everyone knows you go home" is how especially at the beginning his sort of trauma and challenging, all the experiences he's gone through have shut him out and shut him down. not only does the immigration system reduce people to almost

this numeric calculation of their suffering, but it requires you to tell your story of suffering in many cases again and again and again. and that is incredibly challenging for people who've, who are experiencing the adverse impacts of trauma and especially for young people who are not, they don't feel safe in their past experience. >> yep. >> great. in both of these stories, secrets that the families hold are really important to the reasons for their migration. how do -- and in some cases the families themselves hurt each other. the uncle, for instance, in "the faraway brothers" threatens to kill his nephew because someone has taken down his tree on his

property and has to flee because of that. but there are so many secrets that families keep. how does it create a narrative when there are so many missing pieces to a family's life when they have the leave their land, their language and keep these secrets? how do you piece that together? for the fiction and the nonfiction? >> so that was for me as a fiction writer, that was definitely one of the challenges because i remember my first draft because my characters had so many secrets that they were keeping from one another for very different reasons -- much of it, for example, on the side of the parents and throughout different generations -- it's really out of protection and it's out of love. and yet what does that mean about, you know, does that mean the book was -- like they're not talking enough? you know, like things have to still happen. for me the challenge was look beyond, i just felt like, well, we're not only defined by the

secrets we keep, we're also dined by the things that -- defined by the things that we do even as we hold them. and there are secrets in our lives and people who i know and love, i know i will never know all their secret ises. and i think a lot -- secrets. and i think a lot of family members who aren't trying to take -- they don't want to take credit for the sacrifices that they made for me and my sister in order to bring us here. so i realize that i could never actually fully acknowledge everything they've sacrificed because i won't always know. because part of them continuing to protect me is keeping those secrets. and so for me, the story was not necessarily about building up to this revelation of the secrets, it was really more about like, well, what happens when that silence lingers and we kind of end up passing, you know, intersecting and crossing these paths. because i think of our lives like these paths, and in some ways those all come to light,

and in other ways they don't. and especially because i was also looking at the intersections between the spiritual world and, you know, life and death, i think that afforded me a little bit more space to think, well, are there things that we will simply carry with us into death, and what does that mean, the not knowing. i think sometimes the not knowing was the more hurtful part, but then how do you, how do you come to terms with what pains you is also what's protecting you. and that became a really driving factor for me. >> yeah. i think secrets as a mechanism and method of protection is definitelying something that emerges -- definitely something that emerges in the family that i was writing about and all of those sort of corollary people i spoke to either who i interviewed once at a, you know, detention center -- or, sorry, a shelter in chappas or at a

detention center for young gang members in el salvador. the secrets, like i'm protecting my family, so i'm not telling them this thing. or, you know, i don't want my dad to know what's happening because i don't want him to know that i was in a gang. or i don't want my brother to know that x, y, z happened because then he'll think less of me. that was all really, that secret-keeping is protection. but i also saw, and sometimes these are twin, right? a lot of secret-keeping out of shame. and one of the things for me that was most vexing about the secrets was, as a nonfiction writer, it was my job to figure out what had motivated and kind of caused, like what was the sequence of event is the and what was the internal reality that had caused, you know, these two young men to -- these are identical twin brothers. one of them falls on kind of the

wrong side of the wrong guy. his uncle's protected by the gangs, and he has to flee overnight. there's a price out on the twins' head. my job was to figure out, okay, what were the circumstances even before these young people's birth that created -- what were their motivations, what were their internal realities, their external realities that kind of led up to this rupture in their lives where they had to make this move, what were the conditions in el salvador, what was the u.s.' role in that. i had to go way, way, way back and way deep in individual characters and individual people's decision to kind of understand that moment and everything that happened kind of after. but when people are keeping secrets, it's much trickier, right? just one example is that the sister becomes -- and i think we'll talk about her a little bit more later -- but the sister who stays back home, maricela,

is a really big and important character in this book. and she had her second kid with a, someone she met. and i said, well, how did you meet him? and he said, oh -- she said, oh, it was just so weird. one day he called, and he -- it was a wrong number, and we just started talking. he lived a couple hours away, and we decided to meet up. we liked the sound of each other's voices, and we got to know each other, and then we started a relationship and had a baby. i'm like, oh, that's really interesting. over time that's not what had happened at all. what she had done was sent her information, like sent her number. there's a tv show in el salvador where people -- it's almost like a craig's list, like online chat forrun thing, but it's on -- record forum thing, but it's on tv. she said something along the lines of i'm looking for friendship, here's my number. and there's this ticker tape that goes underneath this talk show or whatever.

so she started getting all these calls, and that's where she met guy. but she never told her family that, you know? she didn't want anyone to know because it was out of this loneliness and the shame of her loneliness of being -- i almost picture her, what's the movie where, shoot 'em up movie, bonnie and clyde, you know? the beginning bonnie is like are, she's like sort of lonely and bored in her, like, in this house in the middle of nowhere. and she is just like dying for action, and then clyde comes into town. but she had that sort of similar, like, she was just dying for action in her life and dying to be seen and connected to people. but that was shameful to her, her own loneliness, so she wouldn't tell people about that. that's just one example of about a thousand of ways that secrets are really complicated when you're trying to write a book of truth. like you say, you'll never, ever, ever know, right? if all of the secrets that people keep, even your closest

loved ones. also it's the nonfiction writer's job to understand as much as possible and bring that stuff to life. >> great. in both of your books, the migrants create relationships with u.s.-born members of their family or friends, and what kind of dynamics are there in, you know, both people from the same ethnicity but yet such different upbringing? natalia, i know in your book even isabella and her husband martin have different backgrounds and talk about, you know, how, oh, you don't understand how came because your family wasn't a migrant family. is and, lauren, in yours ernesto and raul date young women who are u.s.-born. and they do find lots of commonalities, but then there's lots of things that the other doesn't understand. so how do they create those

relationships? >> so my book begins on the day of the dead which is when martin and isabelle are married. and that's the day that martin's father, who's dead, visits them on the day of their wedding, and nobody will talk to him because they've been estranged for so long. except for isabelle. so they develop this very special bond. and throughout the process of the book, you learn that isabelle is actually, she's like sixth generation texan. and so like you were mentioning, her and martin -- martin whose mother and father crossed the border or before he was born, they have these very different experiences. and yet, for example, isabelle is often asked, you know, well, where are you from? and when she says texas, it's like, yes, but where are you really from, right? because she still looks a certain way, and people feel that's not -- that must mean

you're from somewhere else. but i think that one of the things i was trying to convey too is that there are these very different ways that we connect to our roots. for example, isabelle at the beginning of the book, she's not entirely like -- she doesn't really celebrate day of the dead in the way that most people do, and she learns to connect to it more throughout the process of the book as she understands the significance of it and as she, you know, tries to be more aboutive about honoring her loved ones who have passed. and i think that was something that became very important to me in order to say like, you know, yes, we've each been here in different ways and we have different ways of staying connected to our roots but also claiming our space here. and the in-between spaces became really important to me as well because that idea of, like, well, where are you from, right? and the idea if you're from here but then when you go home or if you don't, then people there ask you where you're from. you never seem to quite fit in, right?

and to me, i just started thinking like, well, could this in between also be a space that is okay, that we claim as our own? because there's something very unique about the immigrant experience and the lives that we make here in the u.s. that, for example, me as someone who was born in peru, when i go back to peru, i know i don't have the same experience, and does that make me less peruvian or less american? actually, it makes me like these two parts -- it's not like a half and half kind of thing, it's actually i am a whole person, and these are both whole parts of my identity. so i don't know if that explains it. [laughter] >> yeah. you know, i think in the case of the twins anyway, and in addition to writing i work at a high school for immigrant youth in oakland, california, and so i see this among a lot of students

that sometimes what they're looking for in relation, in their relationships is an exit strategy or, you know, moment to moment from, like, the struggles and the secrets and the kind of trauma that they've been experiencing. and i think that for these young men a lot of the relationships that they made were, like, temporary kind of escape hatches or like exit strategies from what they were experiencing. and they were trying to just feel like, you know, normal kids. like, that's what they were looking for in their relationships. one of the things though that really struck me, and this ended up being a scene in the book that we took a very ill-fated camping trip, backpacking trip with some students. one of the twins was on the trip, and they -- a couple of kids would sneak away and smoke cigarettes, and there was this moment -- and i guess, full disclosure since i'm talking

about being a nonfiction writer, california is at this particular -- still and at this particular moment -- was very much in a state of drought. and we found out that these kids were sneaking away to smoke, and we were so terrified of burning down the entirety of california that we decided these kids, we'd make a plan. they were all 18, and i would go and supervise to make sure they weren't, like, you know, about to burn us all down. [laughter] but there was this really interesting encounter between a young man from iraq who had come as a refugee and ernesto, one of the main characters in my book, where they were actually connecting from, like, wildly different life experiences, backgrounds, geographies, their reasons for coming were completely different. but they had this moment of sort of sharing like, yeah, essentially we were both forced out, you know? we both didn't want to leave home, and we both were in danger, and we had to. and it was just really kind of -- and it was all happening

through translation because ibrahim spoke arabic, but spoke english quite well, and there was someone translating into spanish. that was a really interesting moment. and i think especially for young people, they're so much better than adults are at finding commonalities and finding moments of connection. >> thank you. in each of these texts, the unaccompanied minors make several attempts to reclaim their lives, and they do so with so much trauma, and i don't know if it's called ptsd in this case, but there's lots of dreams that wake up err necessary toe, and he -- ernesto and he screams, waking up his twin brother in the middle of the night. and i'm wondering how do the characters make sense of those dreams? and, natalia, in yours it's not so much dreams, it's -- well, it could be perceived at that, you

know? the spirit is visible to only some and others don't see it. so how do, how important is it for them to talk about these spirits or dreams that come up as part of their healing? >> so a lot of, in my book even though it's told in alternate points of views, with we mostly see eduardo's through the points of view of others, especially isabelle. and she so badly wants to know, like, what he's been through. she wants to be able to be there for him in that moment where he finally might, like, vent or given to heal, not realizing that he needs to do that on his own terms. and so -- and in ways he does. like, for him -- to me it was important to recognize the resilience in him. because i do think that youth are so much more resilient than we give them credit for, especially when they're placed in a situation where their innocence and their childhood is

taken. and so they're already in a place where they're having to grow up, and they're having to become what we would think of as, like, stronger versions, you know, of adults, more mature versions of themselves. and yet they are still very much, like eduardo very much wanted these very simple things, you know? he was excited to go to homecoming, he was excited to talk to a girl and have a birthday party. and i just, i wanted for his healing to be on his own terms. and so we do learn throughout the process of the book that he has in his ways dealt with -- but not the way that isabelle necessarily pictured, and not the way she would have wanted. and maybe in a way that doesn't involve her at all. but her role maybe was to allow it, you know, to give him the space to do so. i think that space is really important.

[inaudible conversations] [laughter] >> i just, i was just going to say, vehemently agree that not only i think it was wonderfully done in your book, this kind of healing on people's own terms, but working with young people every day who come from, you know, over 34 countries, i work with 400 students every year that it is on their own terms. that's just a fact. that is how people heal. people healen on their own terms -- heal on their own terms. and what was actually really compelling to me and sort of one of the reasons that i ended up -- you know, these twins did not have, like, the most horrible story. it wasn't the most interesting of all of the stories i've ever heard. it wasn't the most harrowing, it wasn't the most kind of sensational. it wasn't the quietest, right? it wasn't the sort of facts of the story that a lot of journalists tend to drool over. oh, my god, these crazy things

happened which is something which i really try to check in myself and resist. but what was compelling to me about these go two young men is that they were identical, right? >> they look the same. there's still days where i can't tell them apart, each though i know them quite well. every now and then i'll see them and confuse one of them or see a picture and won't be able to tell. they grew up -- they had the most identical life you could possibly have. they grew up in this small, sheltered town in rural el salvador. they came from the same parents, had the same siblings, they were inseparable. they did everything together. and yet they had such different relationships to the, to el salvador, to their home, to what happened to them, to why they had to leave and what that meant, to whether they'd ever want to go back. they had different relationships to california, to their new home, to the identity of being, like, a newly-arrived immigrant in oakland. they had different identities,

they had different things they wanted to do and be professionally, and they had wildly different reactions to the kind of grief and loss and trauma that they'd experienced on the road. and so they had to deal with that really, really differently. and what happened was at different times each, it seemed, each one of them was sort of having a kind of -- you know, they sort of, both of them in different ways would bury their pain and suffering, and then it would bubble up in these really different manifestations. so one of them took to, like, compulsively getting piercings. you'd just, like, pierce right here, you know? and that was like this -- and he was cutting, right? and this was the mechanism he had for dealing with his pain. another one sort of became a temporary alcoholic for a while. they just, yeah, so the ways that they dealt with their pain and their grief and then the way that they began to heal were completely on their own terms.

>> i really like what you said here -- and i had noticed that in your book and admired it. what you said was, yes, these aren't these most extreme cases, and i appreciated that. that's also something i was trying to do with the characters in my book. often times the way the conversation around immigration goes especially now, it does stay within these two extremes. on the one hand, doesn't seek to vilify immigrants using the extreme cases of criminals. and then those who seek to protect them use these cases of, yes, but look at this exceptional person who came here and became a neurosurgeon or became, like, the founder of this grand company. and what gets lost in the middle is the idea and i think the very important perspective that we shouldn't have to be exceptional in either case in order to deserve to just have a right to a safe and happy life.

and the idea that we have to constantly be overperforming in order to prove our worth, it's just not fair. and it's not treating someone as a human being when you do that. and i think a lot of us have felt that pressure. like even my -- growing up, i mean, i felt it for different reasons. like, i felt on the one hand the pressure to overperform in order to make the sacrifices that my parents had made, in order for us to be in this country to make it seem worth it and so, you know, i was an honor roll student in kindergarten. [laughter] it was like, cool, i'm ready for this. >> you know they gave honor roll in kindergarten. [laughter] >> i do, i have this card with my picture on it, and i have no teeth, and it says honorable student. [laughter] i got free fries at burger king. [laughter] like on the one hand, that pressure is very, it's very real. but it comes from a source of love, right? of wanting to honor your parents

and knowing that, well, they wanted what was best for you. the outside pressure of actually being, like, having to validate my existence is much more painful. and i don't, i didn't want to feel like i'm making a case to someone like here's how much my characters have been through, and here's why you should see them as human. because, to me, they already were. and i didn't have -- i didn't want to have to put them through more pain than their experiences already carried in order for a reader to think that, to think that they're human. i think that when we talk about this humanization of immigrants, i feel like maybe what we should be putting that task on is those who seek to dehumanize them. why don't they show their humanity by not putting the burden of proof on us? >> yeah. and i could not agree with that more. people say always time, you

know, gosh, those boys you write about made some horrible decisions. and it's like, yeah, hay did make some bad -- they did make some bad decisions. i get a lot of questions, why did you choose to portray them, you know, in this way that sort of shows them kind of like warts and all? tell us about that decision. and first of all, again, i'm a nonfiction writer, so i portrayed them as they are. but also i'm like, uh, have you ever met teenage boys ever anywhere on earth, right? [laughter] this, you know, why should we be holding these young men to different standards? what, because they have that sort of -- they have to prove it to us that, you know, the law should protect them or that even though the laws do protect them, they're worth it? that's an absurd double standard that i could not agree more that we put on immigrants all the time in very kind of overt, hateful ways. and i think also in really subtle, kind of microaggressive ways as well. >> yeah.

>> i think often what a privilege it must have been to have grown up having a perfectly ordinary life and not having to justify your desire to have it. where i -- there's so many of us who think, okay, so that, again, it has to be quantified somehow. and it's just very sad. >> and that's like any, you know, that's such a losing -- if you're always trying to justify your existence and your right to be somewhere, it's like what an exhausting and never-ending battle, right? >> yeah. [laughter] >> especially too like in fiction be, as a fiction writer, you do get to choose what decisions these characters make. and for me, a lot of the pressure came when you have a character who maybe isn't a good person. and will it be, will that be used as the example, right, to then say, see? look what they're doing, look how bad they are. and that's an unfair burden for anyone to carry because why is

it that we have to then, through our work, represent an entire community when what we're trying to do is actually get so many voices out there that you can see how rich and how much more complex it is, right? so for me, it just became, okay, i'm just more interested in making sure that all these characters get to show their truths. and hopefully, people will be able to see that we all share these common -- the things that we share in common as well as maybe the different opportunities that we weren't afforded. >> right. you know, one thing i was taken with reading both of these is, you know, the influence of technology on their lives. you know, they still wanted to post something on facebook, and i'm thinking, wow, yeah. i mean, it's the same experience, righting? >> and there actually was one of the main reporting tools i used, was instagram and facebook. because there's a record.

and a lot of times these, you know, young men were -- i'd say tell me about that or what was that like, you know, how did that feel, and they'd be like good, bad -- [laughter] i don't know. not because they didn't have completely rich interior worlds, of course they were, but communicating those was uncomfortable and challenging for all sorts of reasons. they sometimes didn't want to. it was like their processing their own stuff on their own terms. and they were totally open to the book, but just that process was challenging. and so the fact that i could go on -- never would have guessed this, but i could go on instagram, and they were actually emoting more on instagram and facebook. they would say today is a really sad day because of -- whoa, okay. i could ask them about that, but also it was a record of their emotions that they were much more comfortable in that virtual space than they were in real life. >> and how much danger that brought, too, for ernesto and raul, posting when they were

going to leave and how much that creates a trail for somebody to follow them. >> exactly. >> and then in both cases the young men, you know, the possibility of them driving and maybe getting a ticket, all the dangers that presents. yeah. in both of the works, women have to negotiate their agency. they create the relationships in their family, they try to stabilize them, they try to deal with the, you know, the way the income works. in "the faraway brothers," the sister of the twins, maricela, has to try to get back the money, the huge debt that their family has gotten into because they paid for their, you know, two sons to leave. ..

the increase in the number of young women were leaving el salvador and making this journey and in both of the books, the women recognize that they travel over the border, their lives are raised in many different ways versus men who travel that border. can you tell us about how you wanted to write these and what they have to negotiate? >> i think the were the sticks out to me right now when you're talking about is instability. i think of stability is such an incredible course and yet, he didn't notice until it is gone. cindy, looking back at the way

my childhood, just looking back i realize that the force was held together and perpetuated by my mother. and i dedicated this book to her because to me, she, even on my parents both made sacrifices, the one that my mother made was to give us that stability. the emotional stability. she nurtured and keep, even a checkbook balance, to keep us navigating the immigration system. back and forth, checking the mail, filling out forms, and realizing this avenue will not work we need to sign a new one. okay maybe we have to drive to the embassy today to get papers. it was just, always there. she was always carrying it. and i noticed that in some ways and obviously as you get older there are different ways. i think the important thing to me, it became important for me

to see the experiences of others like her. and not let it get overshadowed by these, the more obvious accomplishments of yes, my father also worked and he started over from scratch and he had to build his new career after learning a language and taking on these tests and getting recertified and everything. anybody that but i also felt it was time to reclaim the values my mother had brought as well. especially as far as the agency of the characters. a lot of the woman, they go through hard things in the book and yet, they also, i firmly believe that we are more than what we carry.i wanted to be able to see all of them, not just the aftermath of these

experiences. what else is happening to them and what else are they doing with that experience? how much does it play a role and in what other ways is it me imposing my own gaze and saying what is this? maybe they are trying to look another way and so, it becomes very complicated but it was something that like when i had to change the name of the character and i learned that her name, the new managers actually means warrior. and i felt it was very fitting because she is a warrior and she is fighting all these battles that maybe others do not see. >> i mean, it is sort of imposing this on the characters is real and fiction i written and certainly when you're

writing about experiences and communities that you are not from. it's i, became a really significant character in the book and it is not one of the initial fence. when i first met her, i was very confused by her. my gaze was on these two young men. and everything that they embraced and everything they were struggling with. these two young men living open, 17, struggling to find a lawyer having lived through unspeakably horrible things that happen to them. they had been detained, far from family, one having bad dreams and you know, they had all this pressure and based had missed family and their living with their older brother who is a really sweet guy and he was 24 and not that equipped to deal with who among us, if you

are two twin brothers showed up at your doorstep. and i sense from her, sometimes the first time i was like, she has so much resentment toward her brothers. it is so i mean what is this? like, she is like when are they going to send money? why are they doing? why are they school? they need to get jobs. and you know this is intense. where is the compassion for her brothers? it is because my game is so undimmed i was not seeing at all the kind of mess that they had left her in. and this is not the part the sum on the scale of either but the point is both of them, both in the united states and in el salvador, the twin brothers and the brother who is their

guardian and marisela in the parents, everyone had their own reality and challenges and which is to say, i think we focus on immigration stories as like this thing that starts when someone steps across the line and in the immigration story has to be that what is happening in the united states? but the world keeps going and the people that were left behind are still behind. it was like i knew that intellectually but marisela taught me a lot about that and try to understand her world and her challenges. that kind of opened up this i think important narrative aspect of the book is that need to be going back and forth between el salvador and the united states. and also within myself sort of a double compassion that both people are right. and both people are wrong about the other person. the amount that was on her

shoulders because her brothers left was tremendous. at a certain point there were over $22,000, her parents are elderly, she had two kids, the prize, the shot that the boyfriend didn't work out so well. he was not as solid as a guy that she had hoped and imagined. meanwhile from her perspective, her twins are living the high life in their posting about their new nike shoes on histogram.she doesn't know what they cost but is more money than she has seen. the mother pressure on her was tremendous. and it led to a magazine in pacific standard, the plight and fate of young women in el salvador and the options and the concept of violence there. more and more young women are leaving. more young women are dying and more and more young women are joining gangs. and i don't, el salvador is not

monolithic but in the community, it really has a stranglehold on everyone and all of the activities that go on in the town. those are options and marisela was the first one to teach me that. >> in your book, writing about omar as a spirit who appears on the day of the dead, it seems like such a challenge to write about because he is not the word is transparent or invisible but how did you decide to write about i mean creating a character who is present to only some and have you had a lot of feedback about the popularity of the day of the dead?

>> yeah, so -- the book actually began with him. he was a force that brought even just everything that came after and i think a lot about the difference between the spark and the idea of the book and then what propels it to continue as you write it because it is full of a lot of ups and downs as you're writing a novel. i realized partly through that the original premise i had was simply a man and woman were married on the day of the dead in here is the spirit who comes and what if he is turned away? except for by this one person. and so the more that i was writing this, almost came very clearly to me, someone who actually was funny at times witty and dry even though he is dead he is this incredibly joyful character and i realize that there is a lot of depth in the book but also there is a

lot of life and for me that is the duality. there isn't one without the other so why would i write a book about death without life? or even like pain without joy? i wanted to really incorporate on that. but the more i thought about it, in writing omar and writing crossing over from the spirit world into the land of the living, i realize like this is an immigration story. and this is an immigration story that i feel like i have carried on my whole life trying to make sense of. with all of these different experiences not only in my own life but the people i love and people share their stories with me over the years. people in the community. and so much of it, it was two questions that were driving it because a, omar someoneb& famil and abandoned them despite really loving them.

and for me the question i always wondered was, how did my parents leave peru? the country that they knew and loved and that they decided to leave. right? what is it that makes the someone or something that you love so deeply? and so that was the question of trying to answer through him and his life story. the other question became, what happened when you've made this really difficult journey and you arrive and you are turned away? i realize again, it was about i was thinking how is his own so many can be turned away after everything they have been through and the other thing that became important also, i wanted to be very conscious of it was the idea that the damper that is suddenly becoming this very trendy thing to those who are not part of the culture.

and even though we do celebrate the day of the dead i personally have not celebrated it but i have known about it and when he really wanted it to be focused on at least was the spirit of the holiday. honoring the memory of your loved ones that have passed. to me, the idea of refusing to forget translated not to just refusing to forget reluctance but refusing to forget a history that may be a lot of people would like us to forget. any history of violence, a history of also joy. history of rewriting and actually pretending not a lot of things didn't happen. and so for me, but became important to me about the spirit is that, honoring the idea. and it is about holding onto

something that others might say just let it go. >> these texts intersect so much and in all of the circumstances that affect migrants. we would like to allow the audience to ask questions so we have about a little less than 10 minutes. we will take questions. [inaudible question] >> one woman, we will wait for a microphone. [inaudible] >> is it something that compelled you that you just felt that you had to write about it? just wondering how was that for you? >> yeah, both i would say. i write some fiction and i also write nonfiction.

i have, writing anything helps me to better understand it for myself. it's an exercise for myself and writing nonfiction, i could have gotten into journalism. you can tell i do not wear that is comfortably sometimes. but i think that what journalism, i figured out when i got into journalism through the back door was that journalism was a way to write about and first and foremost learn about things, political dynamics and human experience that felt vital and important and that i wanted to understand as a human being. and then to try to make sense of that for the readers. i have been writing about the kind of rise in population for a couple of beers and then one day i was sitting at my desk and a friend and colleague walked in and said, at the school i work and said you know, we have to do something about all of these kids of ours

who have upcoming court cases. and i said what are you talking about? can it turns out all of this was wonder my nose and all of these young people at the school where i was four days a week. it is sort of a conversion and it felt like vital. none of that stuff seemed to land and none of it seemed to go anywhere that i had -- young people i was working with. and i was hearing that for my students as well. it felt like a responsibility. >> i would say it is both. on the one hand, all writers have something to say but there are times when you don't know what is compelling you and the questions that you're asking as you write reveal what you're

trying to say even when they don't give me direct answers. for me, when my first writing teacher would always tell me that there was a story behind the story. and that is really cared for me the story behind the story was people that i know and love and i have grown up with. and the sentiment that even just i live. and it brings up, trying to honor those experiences in a way that actually brought me joy. because i know this might sound surprising but i thought a lot about these experiences but i experienced a lot of joy writing these characters because they felt true to me and it felt like what a privilege to be able to see each of these characters with all that they bring. not just their pain. so it is like their dreams and

aspirations and their triumph. so i mean, it is really ãi am hoping that answers your question. >> the joy, that was true for me too. that was it felt very much like a privilege to get to spend time with these people in real life and tried to make, bring them as true as i had experienced them as much as i possibly could. >> thank you. we have a question here in the third row. in the front. thank you. first i want to thank the panel really an interesting session. we heard from another fiction writer and a nonfiction writer and what interested me, one of the things in which the line between fiction and nonfiction,

but i wonder if you might comment on that. the fiction writer, do they not have more liberty, more freedom? or not? and, on the other side, does the nonfiction writer, you're always a writer. you are always dealing with the so-called real people anyway. thank you. i have a background in journalism. and fiction. i was studying and called in for me it was always fascinating because when you think of nonfiction and even journalism, what i think about often is who is writing it? and what is the gays and what are the things getting lost in between? because you've all heard the rays that history is written by the victor. to me it is, what other voices that are not, that are getting

-- i think in that way, what i love so much about fiction is that it feels truer and that even we don't have access to facts as they are presented to you, because those facts were a journalist, they are limited in so many ways about -- and yet i can see the gap. what i read, every time i read a newspaper article. every time i read a history book. i think so much, what are -- we are learning about this, but where are the voices that got lost? i think that even in my own family. in my own family history and my ancestors. that is why to me i like this idea of the spirit and your hearing from generation to generation. it resonates so much with me

because there are so many stories over generations that just get lost or are not heard and yet, we feel them. i look in the mirror and i can see the traces of my roots and yes, i also have indigenous roots and where those names and stories? i feel like i still have responsibility for the truth and i still heavily research everything but i also feel like i have a responsibility to acknowledge and hopefully honor all that still survives and maybe it wasn't being emphasized nearly as much. and to kind of reclaim those stories and the names. even if i don't know all of the details. my job is to imagine and listen and hopefully bring that out. >> we will end with lawrence response to this question as we are nearing the end of our session. >> i agree with all of that.

a friend of mine, wrote a beautiful book of poems where she is imagining, she is a poet and her poems are, it is called -- she is imagining, through these poems the experience of disabled people, mentally disabled people specifically in their 30s 40s and 50s who are institutionalized and she is imagining the experiences. she did a ton of research for this book. she is a poet writing poems but those, when you read those poems they feel as though there almost journalistic documents even though of course, she talks about empathetic leaps and i see that a latin poetry and infection. i experienced that in the fiction that i write. in certain ways, it is more -- and certain ways you are dropping deeper into the truth because were able to kind of

exist in a round or reality that is not confined just by the facts or in the case really nonfiction the facts that you can find. because i'm only allowed to write this book the things that i know. if i do not know what color the couches i cannot say what color it is. i had to tell you about the wallpaper, right? and that is true in every single moment. so you actually can find not by truth but the truth you can even figure out. i think that there is a real dynamic interplay between nonfiction and fiction and the stories that kind of make meaning of peoples experience. i will say there's something wonderful about nonfiction about the confines. i sit down to write fiction anything is possible. it is this terrifying abyss. whereas with this i really, i can stick to what is true. but yes, i just want to say i think sometimes some of the truest stuff that i read is actually fiction poetry. >> please help me think --

thank our office. we welcome you to the book tent your book sales, book signings as well. thank you. >> thank you. >> next up from texas is an altar panel on class in america. the sixth annual san antonio book festival. >> hello and welcome to the 20 18th san antonio book festival. the sixth annual san antonio book best. this is a panel discussion. what we do not talk about when we talked about poverty with the authors -- a reminder that as we