Unaccompanied

<p><i>New York Times</i> Bestselling Author of <i>Solito</i><br></p><p>"Every line resonates with a wind that crosses oceans."-<b>Jamaal May</b></p><p>"Zamora's work is real life turned into myth and myth made real life." —<em><b>Glappitnova</b></em></p><p>Javier Zamora was nine years old when he traveled unaccompanied 4000 miles across multiple borders from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with his parents. This dramatic and hope-filled poetry debut humanizes the highly charged and polarizing rhetoric of border-crossing; assesses borderland politics race and immigration on a profoundly personal level; and simultaneously remembers and imagines a birth country that's been left behind.</p><p>Through an unflinching gaze plainspoken diction and a combination of Spanish and English <em>Unaccompanied</em> crosses rugged terrain where families are lost and reunited coyotes lead migrants astray and "the thin white man let us drink from a hose / while pointing his shotgun."</p><p><strong>From "Let Me Try Again":</strong></p><p><em>He knew we weren't Mexican.<br>He must've remembered his family<br>coming over the border or the border<br>coming over them because he drove us<br>to the border and told us next time rest<br>at least five days don't trust anyone calling<br>themselves coyotes bring more tortillas sardines<br>Alhambra. He knew we would try again.<br>And again—like everyone does.</em></p><p><strong>Javier Zamora</strong> was born in El Salvador and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. He earned a BA at UC-Berkeley an MFA at New York University and is a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.</p>