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Buffs One Read 2024-2025: Solito

 

Solito: A Memoir

In Solito, a young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine. A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home. - From Penguin Random House

 

Read an excerpt

“Solito” is an important, beautiful work ... not just a migration tale; this is also an artist's coming-of-age story.

Zamora writes with economy and eloquence, and his narrative connects the reader directly to the tastes and terrors, smells and stresses of life on the run from the law.

As touching as it is sad, and as full of hope and kindness as it is harrowing, Solito is the kind of narrative that manages to bring a huge debate down to a very personal space, bridging the gap between the unique and the universal in ways that make both look like one and the same.

[Solito] sheds an urgent and compassionate light on the human lives caught in an ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Beautifully wrought work that renders the migrant experience into a vivid, immediately accessible portrayal.

Written as a journal of the trip, Solito is a monumental act of reconstruction, drawing on memories Javier was only able to access after retracing his route as an adult.

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