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"There are things that can only be understood retrospectively, when many years have passed and the story has ended. In the meantime, while the story continues, the only thing to do is tell it over and over again as it develops, bifurcates, knots around itself. And it must be told, because before anything can be understood, it has to be narrated many times, in many different words and from many different angles, by many different minds."
"Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions" is a short read but it packs a punch. For writer Valeria Luiselli, the story she's sharing is about the intake process for unaccompanied child migrants. Like she writes in the end, it's a story that's going wrong and we're still in the middle of it and this shouldn't be the only thing you read about what happens when children show up on the border of the United States.
But it's a good start. Luiselli shares how she became a volunteer translator, helping children fill out the intake form when not only is there a language barrier, but many of the kids are too young to quite understand what's going on.
It started with Luiselli's own problems with navigating the bureaucracy of her own green card. Her immigration lawyer gets a new job working with an organization that was formed to help with an influx of unaccompanied child migrants.
As Luiselli tells her story and the stories of the kids she has worked with, she goes through the questions on the intake form.
It's personal, and it's emotional, and we need these kinds of stories as much as we need the statistics. Luiselli is standing witness.
"So when I have to ask children that seventh question -- 'Did anything happen on your trip to the US that scared you or hurt you?' -- all I want to do is cover my face and my ears and disappear. But I know better, or try to. I remind myself to swallow the rage, the grief, and shame; remind myself to just sit still and listen closely, in case a child does happen to reveal a particular detail that can end up being key to his or her defense against deportation."
"Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions" by Valeria Luiselli.
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