A Lost Family

I really wanted to like this book. It deals with important social issues...

1. The immigration crisis & its effects on families
2. Family dissolution and its effects on children
3. The ecfects of parents self absorption on children
The parents in this book were so focused on helping others and documenting the wrongs of society that they were blind to the pain they inflicted on the people closest to them, their own "lost children".
It was a very dense text in which the author inserted related stories and quotes. This took away from the flow of the story.

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Een schrijfster waarover ik al meerdere keren goede dingen las, waarvan ik meerdere positieve recensies las, maar die ik liever niet vertaald wilde lezen, is Valeria Luiselli. Het eerste boek dat ik tegenkwam was dit Lost Children Archive. Zware titel, moeilijk onderwerp. Maar wel een logische keuze, gezien de achtergrond van de schrijfster. Met de foto’s achterin concludeer ik dan ook dat het boek niet geheel fictie is, dat er een daadwerkelijke zoektocht heeft plaatsgevonden.

In New York is de schrijfster op haar plaats. Zij mag prachtige projecten doen, haar man helpt haar – zo hebben ze elkaar ontmoet – en het samengestelde gezin is gelukkig. Maar aan de grens gaat er van alles mis. Kinderen worden opgesloten, kinderen worden bij ouders weggehaald, kinderen proberen zonder ouders de grens te passeren. En als een vriendin haar hulp vraagt, omdat haar kinderen onderweg zijn naar NY, kan ze niet meer aan de zijlijn blijven staan.

Zeker als de kinderen ook nog eens kwijtraken, iemand moet naar ze op zoek. En dus beginnen ze aan een roadtrip vanaf NY naar de grens met Mexico. De beroemde speld in de hooiberg.

Het knappe van Luiselli is dat ze beide verhalen (de zoektocht en de tocht van de kinderen) naast elkaar kan vertellen, het perspectief wisselt regelmatig. En als lezer weet je dat er een moment komt dat de paden elkaar moeten kruisen. Maar de manier waarop dat uiteindelijk gebeurt is een stuk dramatischer, spectaculairder dan verwacht.

Luiselli heeft een prachtig boek geschreven, warm, betrokken. Maar tegelijkertijd een groot maatschappelijk probleem aangekaart, de grens die meneer Trump probeerde dicht te bouwen met een gigantische muur, is een grens die al jaren lek is. Te veel mensen hebben er belang bij dat die grens niet waterdicht wordt. Maar tussen mensensmokkelaars en drugsbendes lopen dus ook gewoon kinderen op zoek naar hun ouders. Kinderen die zo jong zijn dat ze geen idee hebben hoe gevaarlijk de wereld is, die zich moeten redden tegen alle verwachtingen in.

Schitterend boek, moet meer lezen van deze dame.

Citaat: “…I realized that what I was saying made no sense, that my brain was just going round and round, empty and full of hot air only, though sometimes when the desert wind came, it cleared my thoughts for a moment, but mostly there was just hot air, dust, rocks, bushes, and light, especially light, so much of it, so much light pouring down from the sky that it was hard to think, hard to see clearly, too, hard to see even the things we knew by name, by hear,…” (p.319) ( )

Modernist fiction and political activism have been brought together to produce Lost Children Archive. Luiselli is the daughter of a Mexican ambassador. She grew up in countries around the world as her father was posted to them to represent his nation, she is the holder of a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Columbia University, she is a professor at Hofstra, and, like myself and probably most people who will read this novel, has political values commonly found in people from such a cosmopolitan, intellectual, relatively elite background. When the southern border crisis grew around 2014 or so, Luiselli admirably volunteered her time and efforts to help the desperate refugees trying to reach the United States navigate the US legal system. One isn't surprised to read that this novel began as a self-admitted screed against American racism and American imperialism before being put on hold and later re-worked as a modernist intertextual manuscript, in dialogue with Pound, Eliot, Woolf, and others.

Does it work, judging it as fiction (as we have to take it for granted that it won't change a thing politically)? In the first half of this novel of two parts, the story is told from the point of view of a mother traveling by car from NYC to the border area with her soon-to-be ex-husband and their two children. She is working on a story about the children who travel to the border alone and disappear in their attempt, wiped from the map, except sometimes as a red X marking where bodies are found in the desert. She questions her project, mirroring Luiselli herself no doubt:

Political concern: How can a radio documentary be useful in helping more undocumented children find asylum? Aesthetic problem: On the other hand, why should a sound piece, or any other form of storytelling, for that matter, be a means to a specific end? I should know, by now, that instrumentalism, applied to any art form, is a way of guaranteeing really shitty results: light pedagogic material, moralistic young adult novels, boring art in general. Professional hesitance: But then again, isn't art for art's sake so often an absolutely ridiculous display of intellectual arrogance? Ethical concern: And why would I even think that I can or should make art with someone else's suffering?

Along the way she and her family come into contact with some unfortunately stereotypically drawn caricatures of bigoted residents of "middle America". There is a funny scene though when she and her husband meet a man who is an enthusiast of Westerns, and in trying to fake a sympathetic fondness for them herself, she can only come up with Bela Tarr's Satantango, which the clueless gentleman admits to being unfamiliar with and suggests they watch it together. Our family flees before discovery. As a scene demonstrating the vast cultural gulf and disconnectedness between stereotypical "coastal elites" and stereotypical "middle America", it's pretty good.

In part two of the story, the narration shifts to her ten year old son, who takes along his five year old sister as they run away from their parents to find some "lost children" and make their way to a location of importance to the Apache tribe, whose genocidal destruction by the white imperialists is the focus of the husband. His voice is sometimes completely unbelievable as a child, and sometimes boringly simplistic enough to be so. It culminates in a fever dream of a 20 page long sentence in which his viewpoint alternates with that of a small group of lost refugee children who seem to physically emerge from a book he and the mother have been reading in a whirlwind of, what, neo-magical realism? Definitely odd, sometimes engrossing, sometimes not.

Overall for me it is a novel that is highly intellectual, produces lots to discuss, and is moderately enjoyable as a work of fiction. ( )

WINNER OF THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2021 Explores what holds a family and society together and what pulls them apart. It juxtaposes rich, poetic prose with direct storytelling.

(7.5)I have been anticipating reading this book for a few years, especially after reading [American Dirt]. If I remember correctly, Luiselli was critical of [[Jeanine Cummins]], for sensationalizing a very serious situation in her book. I personally found [American Dirt] a page-turner and thought it drew my attention to the crisis.
Not so, in this novel. I found it slow moving and struggled to engage with the individual members in this family. I found both parents portrayed were self-absorbed and very focused on pursuing their career paths. The road trip sounded tedious for the children. I, also wondered if there was an autobiographical element to the story. The story finally gains momentum when the son picks up the narrative and this section saved the book from a lower rating by me. However, this section was also written in solid text of one single long sentence! I recommend you make time to read it in one sitting, possibly the purpose of this devise. ( )