Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Sonia Nazario's Enrique’s Journey. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Enrique’s Journey: Introduction
A concise biography of Sonia Nazario plus historical and literary context for Enrique’s Journey.
Enrique’s Journey: Plot Summary
A quick-reference summary: Enrique’s Journey on a single page.
Enrique’s Journey: Detailed Summary & Analysis
In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of Enrique’s Journey. Visual theme-tracking, too.
Enrique’s Journey: Themes
Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of Enrique’s Journey's themes.
Enrique’s Journey: Quotes
Enrique’s Journey's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter.
Enrique’s Journey: Characters
Description, analysis, and timelines for Enrique’s Journey's characters.
Enrique’s Journey: Symbols
Explanations of Enrique’s Journey's symbols, and tracking of where they appear.
Enrique’s Journey: Theme Wheel
An interactive data visualization of Enrique’s Journey's plot and themes.
Brief Biography of Sonia Nazario
Nazario was born in Madison, Wisconsin to a Syrian father and a Polish mother, who both immigrated to Argentina. Nazario herself grew up in Kansas and Argentina. She is a graduate of Williams College and has a master's degree in Latin American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and has been a journalist writing about social issues for over three decades.
Get the entire Enrique’s Journey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Historical Context of Enrique’s Journey
Nazario’s account of Enrique’s story seeks to humanize and publicize the conditions and factors, social and economic, that contribute to immigration from Central America to the United States in the early 21st century. There is no one contributing historical event that drives these changes, though the events of September 11, 2001 contributed to the increased effort by the United States to protect its border and curtail illegal, undocumented immigration into the country.
Other Books Related to Enrique’s Journey
While Enrique’s Journey is non-fiction, it confronts the problems of immigration using the personal story of one boy’s journey as its entry-point. Therefore, the work blends journalistic, non-fiction writing with more narrative styles to construct the journey for us through the eyes of Enrique. Nazario mentions its difference to other literary works, such as The Odyssey, namely that the reunion of Enrique and his mother is not as simple as it would be in fiction. Other books that relate to Enrique’s Journey in terms of style are The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande and Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail by Ruben Martinez. Both investigate the effects of immigration on families, and research the dangers of the journeys themselves. The Distance Between Us is a memoir and therefore looks at these issues through a single perspective, as Nazario hopes to do with Enrique. Crossing Over is written by an author who, like Nazario, reconstructs the path of the migrant through Mexico.
Key Facts about Enrique’s Journey
- Full Title: Enrique's Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother
- When Written: 1997-2006
- Where Written: Honduras, the United States, Mexico
- When Published: 2006
- Genre: Non-fiction
- Setting: Tegucigalpa, Honduras; Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxaca, Mexico City, and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; Los Angeles, North Carolina, and Florida, United States
- Climax: The book climaxes when Enrique crosses the Rio Grande, enters the United States, and finally reunites with his mother in North Carolina. Because the book is non-fiction, there is not a specific moment that Nazario constructs which can count as the climax. Rather, it is a fast-paced account of the trials of a seventeen-year-old boy in search of his mother.
- Point of View: Nazario
Extra Credit for Enrique’s Journey
The real scoop. Enrique's Journey first appeared in the Los Angeles Times as a six-part series in 2002 with photographs by Don Bartletti.
Double Pulitzer. Both the author, Sonia Nazario, and the photographer, Don Bartletti received Pulitzer Prizes for their work on Enrique's Journey.
