About this item
Award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos explores illegal immigration with this emotionally raw and timely nonfiction book about ten Central American teens and their journeys to the United States.You can't really tell what time it is when you're in the freezer. Every year, thousands of migrant children and teens cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The journey is treacherous and sometimes deadly, but worth the risk for migrants who are escaping gang violence and poverty in their home countries. And for those refugees who do succeed? They face an immigration process that is as winding and multi-tiered as the journey that brought them here. In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survival -- including two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry waters -- offer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.-Central American refugee crisis.In turns optimistic and heartbreaking, The Other Side balances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions. Here is a necessary read for young people on both sides of the issue.
About the Author
Juan Pablo Villalobos nació en Guadalajara, México, en 1973. Estudió Marketing y Literatura Hispánica. Ha realizado cientos de estudios de mercado y ha publicado crónicas de viaje, crítica literaria y crítica de cine. Se ha ocupado de investigar temas tan dispares como la ergonomía de los retretes, la influencia de las vanguardias en la obra de César Aira, la flexibilidad de los poliductos para instalaciones eléctricas, los efectos secundarios de los fármacos contra la disfunción erectil o la excentricidad en la literatura latinoamericana en la primera mitad del siglo XX. Ha sido becario del programa Alban, becas de alto nivel de la Unión Europea para América Latina, y del Instituto de Investigaciones Lingüístico-Literarias de la Universidad Veracruzana. Estudia un doctorado en Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada en la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Actualmente vive en Barcelona, donde combina la escritura con su trabajo en una empresa de comercio electrónico.
