“WE ARE NOT FROM HERE”–Book Review #1–Victor’s Vantage Point

Victor Urizar, JSEC Newspaper Journalist

The JSEC Book Club, led by Mr. Quesnel and Ms. Jenner, is an informal club that meets, often during lunch, to review books together and discuss the perils, adventures, travesties, and every day curiosities we experience in everyday life.   Often real world events are depicted in books we read and the JSEC Book Club makes it mark by trying to make asimulate these events with books of fiction and non-fiction!   The latest book to be reviewed “We Are Not From Here” by Jenny Torres Sanchez

Disclosure:

Trigger Warnings: Sexual Assault, Death, Rape, racism, violence against children, Gang violence, Dismemberment.

Book Review:  by Victor Urizar

“WE ARE NOT FROM HERE” is a story about three teens that were forced to leave their home in search of safety and the possibility of a better life. It is a book that takes real life events and puts them on page for the viewers to experience. In addition, it discusses the experiences of adults and children that decide to take the long and dangerous journey in an attempt to seek protection from the threatening dangers that are occurring in their homeland. 

 

The book shows us everything the main characters had gone through such as the difficult walk from Guatemala all the way to the United States, the thugs that harm them along the way, how they are put into cages if they are caught. It talks about how awful they are treated just because they are from a different background.

Pictured: Victor Urizar De Leon & Erica Perez Cortez

I could not stop reading. The plot was as intriguing as it was hard to read. I needed to know what was going to happen next, needed to know if everything would work out for these characters. I loved that they included Spanish words throughout the book and how they incorporated so that even non-Spanish could understand through context.

 

I would recommend this book to anyone that is interested in learning the hardships that immigrants face along their journey into the U.S and to anyone who wants a hard hitting and relevant story.