Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Tell Me How It Ends, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Migration and Personal Sacrifice
Language and Storytelling
International Relations and Political Responsibility
Gang Life vs. Community Engagement
Summary
Analysis
In 2015, Valeria Luiselli begins volunteering as an interpreter whose job it is to interview undocumented child migrants in New York City. She explains that the questions she asks these children are part of an “intake questionnaire” used by the city’s immigration court system. The first question on the form is, “Why did you come to the United States?” This is only one of 40 questions that Luiselli poses to child migrants, whose answers she translates from Spanish to English and writes on the questionnaire. Although this question might seem straightforward, Luiselli notes that the answers she receives are rarely “simple.” Instead, children tell her long and complicated stories about why they came to the United States, stories that she has to “transform” into “succinct sentences.” This, she says, is especially difficult because the narratives often have “no beginning, no middle, and no end.
Luiselli begins Tell Me How It Ends by calling attention to the nuances of language. Because she is interviewing children, she can’t always count on receiving “simple” responses to the questions she asks, so it’s her job to sort through the disparate narrative threads the child migrants deliver, trying to make sense of their situations. The book’s title itself highlights the human tendency to yearn for cohesion and logical conclusions, so it’s worth noting that the stories Luiselli hears when interviewing undocumented minors have “no beginning, no middle, and no end.” By emphasizing the fluid nature of these stories, Luiselli presents the immigrant narrative as complex and nuanced, thereby preparing readers to approach such stories with open minds.
Themes
After Luiselli interviews child migrants, she convenes with lawyers, relaying the information she has gathered. This is the primary purpose of her job, since what the children tell her ultimately determines whether or not an attorney will agree to represent them pro bono in immigration court. When Luiselli presents them with what she has learned, the lawyers “analyze the child’s responses, trying to come up with options for a viable defense against a child’s deportation and the ‘potential relief’ he or she is likely to get.” If a lawyer chooses the represent a child, “the real legal battle begins”—a battle that determines whether or not the child will be deported.
The fact that the possibility of a child’s deportation is tied to the information Luiselli gathers in her interviews is worth noting, since it emphasizes the importance of storytelling and language. This is why Luiselli is so attuned to the way child migrants tell their stories, since what they say to her largely dictates whether or not they’ll be sent back to the dangerous circumstances from which they’ve fled.
Themes
In 2014, before Luiselli—a Mexican immigrant herself—volunteers as an interpreter, she goes on a road trip with her husband, daughter, and stepson (who’s visiting from Mexico). She and her family are waiting for their green card requests to go through, so they decide to take a vacation in the meantime, driving from their home in Harlem, New York, to Cochise County, Arizona, which is close to the country’s southern border. Because they haven’t yet received their green cards, they are technically considered “nonresident aliens,” at least in the “slightly offensive parlance of U.S. immigration law.” “There are ‘nonresident aliens,’ ‘resident aliens,’ and even ‘removable aliens,’” Luiselli writes. She and her family, she says, want to become “resident aliens,” even though the bureaucratic process of becoming a United States citizen is quite grueling, arduous, and characterized by uncertainty.
Luiselli demonstrates her close attention to language, scrutinizing her own status in the United States and the various terms that people assign to it. The very language used to describe her and her family members, she points out, is “slightly offensive,” as the law refers to them as “aliens,” using a term that denies their humanity, even if only for legal purposes. Although this sends the message that immigrants are unwelcome in the United States, Luiselli still wants to gain residency in the country, demonstrating how willing she is to undergo various sacrifices in order to go on living her life in a more secure and stable fashion.
Themes
Luiselli compares the green card application with the intake questionnaire for child migrants. Next to the questionnaire, the application seems rather “innocent,” asking questions like, “Do you intend to practice polygamy?” By way of contrast, the suspicious and “cynical” nature of the questionnaire makes Luiselli feel as if “the world has become a much more fucked-up place than anyone could have ever imagined.”
Juxtaposing her own experience of trying to live permanently in the United States with the adversity child migrants face, Luiselli frames the country’s reluctance to accept undocumented minors as cruel. She herself isn’t running from violence, but the process of getting a green card is—apparently—somehow easier than the process children must undergo simply to seek safety. Outlining this discrepancy, Luiselli emphasizes the immigration system’s bureaucratic flaws and lack of empathy.
Themes
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The process of asking undocumented minors questions about their journey to the United States is called “screening,” a term Luiselli finds justifiably “cynical,” as if “the child is a reel of footage.” In these circumstances, she says, their stories become “generalized, distorted,” and seem “out of focus.” As she writes down the children’s answers, she often has to leave entire spaces blank, since they don’t always know—for example—where their parents are.
Luiselli’s attention to language continues, though she begins to doubt the process by which she’s forced to gather information about the child migrants. She has already established that it’s vitally important to relay the stories they tell about their lives, since these narratives are what might help them attract pro bono lawyers. However, the questionnaire itself doesn’t necessarily accommodate the complex nature of their stories, a representation of the fact that the United States’ immigration system struggles to truly account for what undocumented migrants have been through.
Themes
During Luiselli’s family road trip in 2014, she and her husband listen to the radio and hear about the “wave of children arriving, alone and undocumented, at the border.” As they drive, they follow this story, taking note of how the nation is responding to the sudden influx of child migrants. Soon enough, people start referring to the phenomenon as the “immigration crisis,” though Luiselli points out that some people suggest it should be called the “refugee crisis” instead. As the news of these children spreads across the country, everyone wonders where their parents are, what will happen to them, and—most of all—why they came to the United States.
When Luiselli addresses the national response to the immigration crisis, she focuses on the language used to describe what’s happening. To call the problem a “refugee crisis” instead of an “immigration crisis” is more accurate and descriptive, since so many of the child migrants come to the United States to escape danger. In this way, the term “refugee crisis” bears an implicit acknowledgement of the factors contributing to the problem—an important point, since the nation is otherwise so perplexed by the unfolding situation.
Themes
“Why did you come to the United States?” Luiselli asks every child migrant she interviews in New York. Their answers, she explains, often differ, though they frequently identify the “pull factor” as their desire (or need) to reunite with a family member who has already settled down in the United States. The children also pinpoint “push factors,” referencing “the unthinkable circumstances” that have driven them from their homes. These circumstances include gang violence, abuse, “forced labor,” and “abandonment.” Given these motives, Luiselli sees that these migrants aren’t chasing the “American Dream,” but simply the chance to survive.
Describing the “pull” and “push factors” that motivate children to migrate to the United States, Luiselli attempts to dispel the idea that these kids make the arduous journey north to take advantage of the United States’ economic prosperity. Whereas some people might think that all immigrants are pursuing the “American Dream,” Luiselli illustrates that their reasons for leaving their own countries are often far more simple: they want to lead safe lives. Whether they’re actively running from violence or just trying to reconnect with stable caretakers, their main motivations have little to do with getting rich or benefitting from the American economy. By revealing that the majority of child migrants are trying to avoid violence and other horrible fates, Luiselli ultimately invites readers to empathize with their predicament and see that migrating isn’t such an easy choice.
Themes
The children who arrive in the United States aren’t always able to give an exact account of the details of their journey. The second question on the intake questionnaire asks them to state their date of arrival, information many child migrants are unable to provide. “They’ve fled their towns and cities; they’ve walked and swum and hidden and run and mounted freight trains and trucks,” Luiselli writes. “They’ve turned themselves in to Border Patrol officers.” After this long journey, they can’t always identify when, exactly, they crossed the border.
Luiselli explains the ins and outs of what it takes to come to the United States as an undocumented minor from Central America. In doing so, she encourages readers to recognize that migrating requires a great deal of personal sacrifice, since the journey is dangerous and difficult. In fact, it’s so intense that many children can’t even piece together the entire story of their travels. In turn, Luiselli implies that nobody would undergo such a trek unless it was absolutely necessary.
Themes
On the road trip in 2014, Luiselli and her husband try to find any information they can about the child migrants coming into the United States. They scour the news, but it’s rare that a source provides any answers to the many questions surrounding the crisis. In one online article, there’s a picture of Americans clutching guns and flags. Beneath it, the caption reads, “Protesters, some exercising their open-carry rights, assemble outside of the Wolverine Center in Vassar [Michigan] that would house illegal juveniles to show their dismay for the situation.” Another picture that Luiselli and her husband find online is of an elderly husband and wife raising signs that say, “Illegal Is a Crime” and “Return to Senders.” Luiselli studies their faces and asks herself what they must have been thinking about while showing such vehemence toward child migrants.
In this section, Luiselli continues to portray the scorn many Americans have for immigrants. Considering that she is an immigrant herself dedicated to helping undocumented minors ensure their own safety, it is understandably hard for her to understand why others would show such resentment and hate to children. However, she doesn’t simply write these people off—instead, she tries to comprehend what must be going through their heads, thereby trying to empathize with them even as she bristles at the hateful message they send to migrants.
Themes
Some of the news sources that Luiselli and her husband read frame the crisis as something like a “biblical plague.” Reading these sources makes Luiselli wonder if “the reactions would be different were all these children of a lighter color.” Thinking this way, she asks herself if the child migrants would be “treated more like people” if they were white.
When Luiselli wonders if migrants would be “treated more like people” if they had “lighter” skin, she frames the vitriol surrounding immigration in the United States as a form of bigotry. The intolerance that many citizens exhibit toward immigrants provides ample reason to believe that their anger comes from an inability or unwillingness to embrace people from other cultures, even when those people are running from danger, Luiselli intimates.
Themes
To pass the time in the car, Luiselli and her husband tell their children stories about the history of the American Southwest, “back when it used to be part of Mexico.” Narrating these stories, Luiselli talks about President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act of 1830, when the United States forced Native Americans onto reservations. “It’s curious, or perhaps just sinister,” she writes, “that the word ‘removal’ is still used to refer to the deportation of ‘illegal’ immigrants—those bronzed barbarians who threaten the white peace and superior values of the ‘Land of the Free.’”
Luiselli’s consideration of the similarities between the Indian Removal Act and the detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants shows her interest in the ways history repeats itself. By comparing what’s happening now to the brutal treatment of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, she suggests that contemporary nationalism has its roots in very ugly, fraught histories. Luiselli thus presents a new way to contextualize the issue of immigration in the U.S., applying a historical lens to illustrate the extent to which injustice is often cyclical.
Themes
Luiselli and her husband try to talk to their children about the immigration crisis, but they have trouble answering their questions. “How do you explain any of this to your own children?” Luiselli wonders. When her children fall asleep in the backseat, she looks at them and thinks about whether or not they’d “survive” the journey from Mexico to the United States. Questions three and four on the intake questionnaire are “With whom did you travel to this country?” and “Did you travel with anyone you knew?” Luiselli notes that seemingly all of the child migrants travel with a “coyote,” someone who takes children across the border for a fee. Watching her children sleeping in the backseat, Luiselli thinks about what would happen to them if a coyote “deposited” them at the border.
Because it’s so difficult to make the journey from Central America to the United States, there is quite a bit of uncertainty that comes along with the process of migration. With this uncertainty comes danger, a fact that Luiselli doesn’t know how to explain to her children, who under different circumstances might have faced the same adversities that unaccompanied child migrants currently face every day.
Themes
The intake questionnaire’s fifth question is, “What countries did you pass through?” Following this is, “How did you travel here?” Luiselli explains that the vast majority of the children she interviews come from Mexico, though there are also migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. To answer the sixth question (about how they traveled), almost every child says that he or she took “La Bestia,” or “The Beast.” This is a freight train that runs throughout Mexico, upon which roughly 500,000 Central Americans ride every year. On La Bestia, Luiselli notes, “the most minor oversight can be fatal.” It is a very dangerous mode of transport, since the train often derails, and people frequently fall off during the night. “But,” Luiselli writes, “despite the dangers, people continue to take the risk. Children certainly take the risk. Children do what their stomachs tell them to do.”
The danger that comes along with migrating to the United States is worth noting, since it sheds light on just how desperate migrants are to escape their current circumstances. When Luiselli says that children flee home “despite the dangers” of the journey, she underlines how untenable their home lives must be. The notion that “children do what their stomachs tell them to do” illustrates that coming to the United States is, at least for undocumented minors, a last resort, something that is little more than an instinctual attempt to survive. Again, then, readers see that such migrants aren’t chasing the “American Dream,” but merely trying to stay alive.
Themes
Once child migrants reach the United States’ border, the “coyotes” leave them. At this point, the children try to find Border Patrol officers, wanting to turn themselves in because they know it’s safer to be “formally detained” than to wander in the desert. Luiselli notes that the children will most likely remain “undocumented” forever if the “legal proceedings” don’t begin shortly after they arrive in the country. “Life as an undocumented migrant is perhaps not worse than the life they are fleeing,” she writes, “but it is certainly not the life that anyone wants.”
Luiselli upholds that “life as an undocumented immigrant” is undesirable, but it’s usually better than the circumstances child migrants are fleeing. The fact that living as an undocumented individual in the United States is so hard is yet another testament that most migrants aren’t trying to obtain the “American Dream,” because although they want to find ways to earn permanent residency, they would still prefer to remain in the States without documentation over going home.
Themes
Once child migrants are detained by Border Patrol, they’re put into a detention center known as the “icebox.” It is called this because it’s operated by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and because the entire facility is kept at extremely cold temperatures, as if the children are meats that must be refrigerated. Worse, children experience “verbal and physical mistreatment,” often have nowhere to sleep, are unable to use the bathroom when they need to, and don’t receive enough food. To illustrate the negligence that runs rampant in the icebox, Luiselli references a mishap that took place in 2015, when a Texan detention center gave 250 children adult doses of hepatitis vaccinations. “The children became gravely ill and had to be hospitalized,” Luiselli writes. According to the law, migrants are only allowed to stay in the icebox for 72 hours. However, many children stay much longer than this.
Luiselli presents the bleak conditions of the “icebox” in order to spotlight the troubling nature of how the United States is responding to the sudden influx of undocumented child migrants. The subject of immigration is a controversial topic in the U.S., but Luiselli attempts to transcend the political argument by simply inviting readers—even those who advocate for strict border control and harsh deportation practices—to recognize the inhumane circumstances of the country’s detention centers. Regardless of what a person believes, it’s hard to ignore the fact that children are suffering because of the country’s failure to properly address the immigration crisis.
Themes
Driving through New Mexico in 2014, Luiselli and her family pass groups of men driving pickup trucks. These people are “vigilante, patriotic men who carry pistols and rifles by constitutional right and feel entitled to use them if they see a group of aliens walking in the desert.” While they’re in this region of the country, Luiselli and her husband avoid talking about the fact that they’re Mexican. Still, Border Patrol officers stop them several times. One asks what they’re doing in New Mexico, and they say that they’re writers working on a “Western.” This isn’t true, but they feel they need a concrete reason for visiting the American Southwest.
It’s worth keeping in mind that Luiselli and her husband aren’t in the United States illegally. Since they’re waiting to receive their green cards, they’re allowed to be in the country. All the same, they feel as if they need to justify their presence in the Southwest. This illustrates the extent to which the nation’s overall response to the immigration crisis has altered the lives of all migrants, regardless of their official statuses in the country. What’s more, that they’re pulled over several times once again demonstrates that there is a racial aspect to this subject, since the officers are apparently suspicious of them for no other reason than that they are Latinx.
Themes
The intake questionnaire’s seventh question is, “Did anything happen on your trip to the U.S. that scared you or hurt you?” This, Luiselli explains, rarely elicits answers from the children. They are reticent to speak about the hardships they’ve encountered, but Luiselli knows that most of them have experienced trauma. Because she herself is Mexican, she feels “ashamed” by this question, since she knows that these children have most likely seen horrible things on their journey through her country. The statistics, Luiselli says, are illustrative of this “horror.” To that end, she notes that 80% of “women and girls” who cross the border are raped at some point in their travels. “The situation is so common that most of them take contraceptive precautions as they begin the journey north,” she writes. Furthermore, vast numbers of migrants are “abducted” and “disappear.”
Once again, Luiselli’s description of the dangers related to migration portray the entire endeavor as an intense sacrifice. If so many women are willing to risk getting raped in order to leave their homes, it seems clear that their decision to migrate is a last resort. This aligns with Luiselli’s previous suggestion that the crisis actually has to do with “refugees,” not just “immigrants.” Running from dangers that are even more threatening that the ones they encounter on their journey north, migrants seek refuge because they’ve most likely exhausted all other options.
Themes
Luiselli relates a story from 2010, when 72 migrants from Central and South America were found dead in a mass grave in Mexico. “Some had been tortured, and all had been shot in the back of the head,” she writes. Three of these migrants pretended to be dead, which is how they escaped to tell the tale. Apparently, the drug cartel Los Zetas killed the 72 migrants because the migrants “refused to work for them and did not have the means to pay a ransom.” Stories like these are why Luiselli hates asking children if anything terrible happened to them during their travels. Whenever she asks this, she wants to block her ears, but she knows she can’t. Instead, she forces herself to listen intently, understanding that the children might say something that will make it possible for her to match them with a lawyer and, thus, avoid deportation.
Luiselli’s determination to listen to the children’s stories is a testament to her belief in the power of narrative and language. Although hearing about the trauma undocumented minors have been through deeply troubles her, she commits herself to listening carefully to their tales, since this is the only way she’ll be able to relay their information to a team of lawyers. Consequently, she must do all that she can to understand their stories, even if it pains her to do so.
Themes
Violence isn’t the only danger migrants face when trying to reach the United States’ southern border. Starvation and dehydration in the desert are also very real threats, as over 2,200 “human remains” have been found since 2001. Most of these remains are “unidentified,” which is why a nonprofit organization called Humane Borders created an “online search mechanism that matches names of deceased migrants to the specific geographical coordinates in the desert where their remains were found.” With this tool, people can search for missing family members and see if they have perished in the desert.
Humane Borders’s invention of this interactive map helps family members find out once and for all if their loved ones have died. Of course, the tool itself only provides users with information if a migrant has died (and been found), but it at least eliminates uncertainty in some cases. Given that there are so many dangers and uncertainties that come along with the decision to migrate, this is a very meaningful resource.
Themes
Luiselli upholds that “numbers and maps tell horror stories,” but she also points out that the true horror stories are the ones that never get told. “And perhaps the only way to grant any justice—were that even possible—is by hearing and recording those stories over and over again so that they come back, always, to haunt and shame us,” she writes. “Because being aware of what is happening in our era and choosing to do nothing about it has become unacceptable.” In the current political climate, she upholds, “horror and violence” have been “normalized.” This, she asserts, is unacceptable, since “we can all be held accountable if something happens under our noses and we don’t dare even look.”
Again, Luiselli shows her commitment to the importance of language and storytelling. This time, she urges people to repeat immigrant narratives “over and over again” so that the related horrors don’t slip through the cracks of public consciousness. Storytelling, she implies, is perhaps the only way to hold society “accountable” for the travesties currently taking place between and in Central America and the United States.
Themes
Luiselli’s family returns from their road trip to find their green cards waiting for them in the mail. Luiselli’s, however, isn’t among them. Her lawyer asks if she’s ever visited “Muslim-majority countries,” but Luiselli says it has been ten years since she last traveled to such a place. She also can’t think of any organizations she belongs to that would qualify as “a threat to the United States.” Determining why she hasn’t been issued a green card takes up much of her time, as she’s forced to file “petitions” and place calls to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Fortunately, she has already obtained a temporary work permit, meaning she can continue her job as a lecturer while she waits to find out more about her green card.
As Luiselli considers the influx of child migrants, she also has to deal with complications pertaining to her own residential status in the United States. That she has to apply for a temporary work permit accentuates just how difficult it is to live and work in the United States as an immigrant. Given that Luiselli—a responsible adult—is having trouble with the nation’s immigration system, it’s easy to see why children in even more precarious situations need so much help.
Themes
While Luiselli is sorting out the problems related to her green card, her lawyer gives her case to a colleague, since she herself has decided to take a job at a nonprofit organization advocating for undocumented child migrants. This is because the Obama administration has recently made a “priority juvenile docket in immigration courts to deal with the deportation proceedings of thousands of undocumented children.” This means that the courts are suddenly in desperate need of Spanish-speaking attorneys. When Luiselli’s lawyer tells her why she’s leaving, Luiselli asks if there’s any way she too could become involved, perhaps as a translator or interpreter. Consequently, her lawyer connects her with someone from the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Although Luiselli is fighting her own battle to remain in the United States as a permanent resident, she’s eager to help child migrants in any way that she can. Since she’s a bilingual writer who works closely with language, it makes sense that she would seek volunteer work as an interpreter or translator for undocumented minors, effectively putting her skills to work for a cause she adamantly supports.
Themes
