Entry Question
What things do you know about the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the border at the US-Mexico border?
“Tell Me How It Ends,” a work of narrative nonfiction by the Mexican novelist and essayist Valeria Luiselli born partially of her experience as a volunteer court translator for undocumented migrant children in New York.
Filtered through the lens of the court narrative, these stories of child migration have a single origin somewhere in Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala […] Once the decision to depart is made, the stories begin to migrate north in earnest, starting with La Bestia — the aptly nicknamed network of trains whose roofs and spines thousands of migrant children cling to in order to make it into Mexico alive, the penultimate step in a journey that in the best-case scenario concludes in a detention center on the United States side of the border.
Three Important Sections
.the “children crisis” (37-38)
.the bureaucratic crisis (39-40)
.news coverage (43-4)
Oral Presentations on the film Sin Nombre and the essay “Court.”
Chain Reactions
What is the importance within the essay of the story of the young boy and his folded police report? How can we link this story with the character of El smiley in Sin Nombre? (Pages 42-3)
How Luiselli contextualizes the history of gang formation in Central America? How the film showcases the transnational nature of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13)? (Pages 45-46)
How Sayra storyline in Sin Nombre exemplifies what Luiselli explains about children’s intentions when crossing the border (Page 48)
How the journey north described by Luiselli coincides with what Sin Nombre presents? (Page 51)
