In her memoir, My Side of the River, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez tells a powerful, often heartbreaking story of being a "first gen" child of undocumented immigrants, forced to find her own way at a young age. Camarillo Gutierrez strikes a tone both reflective and urgent as she chronicles a childhood lived between Mexico and Tucson, Ariz., and the practical and emotional challenges she faced when her parents' visas expired and they were unable to return to the U.S.
Camarillo Gutierrez shares the ups and downs of her family's experiences: her parents' struggles to navigate life, housing, and their children's education in a foreign language, and the limited career options available to them in the U.S. She writes vividly of her mother spending nights cleaning a movie theater, while her dad held at least one job that exposed him to potentially dangerous metals and other materials.
Camarillo Gutierrez and her younger brother, Fernando, were told to focus on their schoolwork; Camarillo Gutierrez's mother often told her, "You have to be the best." But when her parents were detained at the border, Camarillo Gutierrez suddenly became solely responsible for herself and Fernando, plus both of their educations. Before long, Fernando returned to Mexico to live with their parents, but Camarillo Gutierrez--determined to complete her education in Arizona--ended up sleeping on the couch of an acquaintance for months.
Camarillo Gutierrez describes the self-doubt, loneliness, and anxiety that plagued her, even as she remained a high-achieving high school student and received several prestigious awards. She charts her journey to pursuing undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, then her brother's return to the U.S. to live with her in New York while their parents (now separated) remained behind in Mexico. Camarillo Gutierrez writes about some of the people who helped her deal with tricky systems, fill in financial gaps, and find emotional support--but she makes no bones about it: being a young immigrant alone is tough. Being a young woman responsible for a younger sibling is tougher. And U.S. immigration policy--widely acknowledged as byzantine and broken--often leaves families like hers fractured, despite their best efforts to remain together.
Building on her viral TED talk, My Side of the River cracks open the "bootstrap" narrative to reveal the costs of such intense self-reliance, and calls on American policymakers to reshape the policies that nearly broke Camarillo Gutierrez's family. Sharp, incisive, and often wryly funny, Camarillo Gutierrez's memoir is a necessary addition to the complex conversation around immigration in the U.S. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams
Shelf Talker: Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez's incisive memoir chronicles her experience as the high-achieving child of undocumented Mexican immigrants.