[su_label type=”info”]Book Review [/su_label]
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The phenomenon of migration—a social topic that has acquired new relevance given the current global political and economic climate—has been approached from multiple points of view and different disciplines, including literature.
Many literary works have tackled this issue from the perspective of migrant men and women who, on a daily basis, risk their lives in search of a better life in foreign territories. However, few have given voice to those brave children and youths who have fled their homes, setting aside fear to go in search of a new life.
In his most recent book “We Are Like the Clouds,” local author Jorge Argueta captures this odyssey in poems that flow like songs when read aloud. The poems, adorned with illustrations by renowned artist Alfonso Ruano, were inspired by testimonies the author gathered after working and living with young immigrants from Central and South America, who arrived in 2014 as refugees in shelters in San Diego.
The author knows this subject very well—years ago, he also left his country, fleeing civil war in El Salvador in the 1980s. Through his own experience, he knows what it means to abandon his homeland—to escape in many cases to other places where one desires to be better.
The memories of abandoned lands and smells and tastes are things these young people carry with them on their journies, like a postcard one keeps of a memory they wish to not forget. Argueta offers these images-turned-poems to the reader on every page of this book. They are the stories of those who, at such a young age, have had to learn to survive.
These are the voices that the reader will find in “We Are Like the Clouds,” voices that will take the reader through the physical and emotional journey of children and young people, who put aside fear and fatigue.
“Like the clouds, like dreams, our children come and go. Nothing and no one can stop them,” writes Argueta. And like clouds, each poem in this book takes different forms to share the fears, dreams and hopes of these brave little migrants. Like clouds that the wind shapes into different figures in the sky, Argueta’s poems on each page transmit sensations and images that evoke, sometimes with humor and joy, but also with the simplicity that the innocent vision of a child can communicate, this reality that afflicts our society.
This book has been awarded the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award for 2017. For 25 years this award has recognized writers and anthologists for their poetic quality in children’s literature. It is presented by a national jury of academics, librarians and poets, and administered by the Pennsylvania Center for Books and Penn State University Libraries. The recognition adds to the already extensive list of prizes that Argueta has received for his literary contribution to children and youth, promoting among them a love of reading as a necessary tool for life.
Jorge Argueta will present “We are like the clouds,” on Friday, March 24, at 6 p.m., at Acción Latina, located at 2958 24th St., in San Francisco. The event is free, and the funds collected during the event will benefit the Proyecto Biblioteca de los Sueños, in El Salvador.