Enriques Journey Summary

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BOOK REVIEW
The Book and the Author
In this work, the book titled “ENRIQUE'S JOURNEY” is reviewed. The book is a non-fiction type. The book was authored by Sonia Nazario who grew up in Argentina and Kansas. She was a project's reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Sonia took more than two decades reporting on social issues for the Los Angeles Times; this gave her a lot of experience in writing about social issues. During her time with the Los Angeles Times, Sonia won a Pulitzer Prize for one of her work; this work formed the background of “Enrique’s Journey”. Apart from winning the Pulitzer Prize, Sonia has been mentioned as the most influential Latinos by Hispanic Business Magazine and also she is among the 40 women who have transformed the operation of media in the past 40 years according to Columbia Journalism Review. At the time of writing the book, she was leaving in Los Angeles.
The General Theme
Family unity is essential for the mental peace of both children and parents. Immigration and search for better employment opportunities is a threat to family unity. Sonia centers her investigation on how immigration can affect family unity. Lourdes, Enrique's mother, travels to the U.S in search of work. She believes she is making the right decision because what she is doing is to benefit her children. Enrique’s mother leaves her two children; the two instantly start feeling the pangs of separation. The children immediately lose the meaning of a family. Enrique particularly asks where his mom has gone. The mother's decision creates a loss to both the children and herself, they both lose the meaning of a family.
Separation can be traumatizing. In the attempt to subdue the trauma, the separated family members can decide to start other families. For example, Enrique’s father decides to start a family with another woman. Enrique’s father action leaves Enrique as someone who can be traded from one homestead to another. Feeling of loneliness overtakes the boy, and because of this, he starts thinking about impregnating his girlfriend. The mother starts a new life in the U.S but is primarily disturbed because of the absence of Enrique and Belky.
When the families were finally reunited, because of their sentiments of separation the unity becomes difficult. After reunion when Enrique asked Maria Isabel to join him, the mother felt reluctant because of fear of abandonment by the daughter. Therefore in the whole book family, and majorly family unity is the overall theme.
Book Summary
The book covers the events in a young Central American boy’s life that was left by the mother. The mother left the boy to seek for work in the U.S. This book gives the details of the boy’s journey in the attempt to reunite with the mother who left him at age five years on January 29, 1989.
With the illusion of finding a better life in the U.S, Lourdes, Enrique’s mother, leaves Tegucigalpa in Honduras. In Honduras, Lourdes and her family were living in poverty. The fact that Lourdes's husband left her worsened the situation; this threatened the education of her children. She was not sure of where she would get enough money to feed and educate her children. She decides to leave for U.S where she hopes to find enough money and send home, and after one year she would come for her children. According to her promise, she fails to return to Honduras in a year’s time.
Lourdes with her smuggler makes a journey through Mexico to the U.S. Her priority is to travel to Miami in the U.S, but the smuggler abandons her at the Greyhound bus terminal in Los Angeles. After three days, Lourdes decides to beg for a job in the nearby factory where she gets a job of sorting tomatoes for $14 a day. From the earnings, she obtains a fake Social security card and a job. She quits the tomatoes sorting job and moves to Beverly Hills where she is offered a job as a live-in nanny. She makes $125 per week which is enough for her to use and also send back home. The pain of not taking care of her children but taking care of another person’s child makes her quit the job in seven months.
On the day Lourdes left Enrique, Enrique felt confused and abandoned. The father, Luis, who had neglected them for three years, takes Enrique in at the time he was abandoned by the mother. The two, the father and the son get attached to each other; the bond is later, after two years, broken when the father decides to start a new family with another woman. Enrique starts leaving with his paternal grandmother, Maria Marcos, in a small shack after being abandoned by the father. At the grandmother's place, Enrique starts selling food and spices to cater for the house expenses. The sister Becky lives six miles away in a better part of town with her aunt, Rosa Amalia. Lourdes manages to send her children money, but the money was not enough to send the children to school.
At the grandmother’s place, Enrique is kicked out because of rebellious acts. He decides to engage in drugs to forget his issues of abandonment and frustrations, especially the uncle’s death. During this time Lourdes’s life in the U.S becomes hard, she works a series of low paying jobs, and she becomes pregnant and delivers Diana. She losses her factory job and to survive, she becomes a Fichera. After some time, she gets another stable job once again and can send toys, clothing, and money to her children in Honduras. These items though good do not fill the gap her absence has caused in her children’s minds. Enrique's drug problem continues, and because of stealing his aunt’s j...