
Co-founder of the Women's March makes her YA debut in a near future dystopian where a young girl and her brother must escape a xenophobic government to find sanctuary.It's 2032, and in this near-future...
Co-founder of the Women's March makes her YA debut in a near future dystopian where a young girl and her brother must escape a xenophobic government to find sanctuary.It's 2032, and in this near-future...
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Lexile®:750
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Interest Level:
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Text Difficulty:3 - 4
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Edition-
- Unabridged
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Available:1
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Library copies:1
Description-
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Co-founder of the Women's March makes her YA debut in a near future dystopian where a young girl and her brother must escape a xenophobic government to find sanctuary.
It's 2032, and in this near-future America, all citizens are chipped and everyone is tracked—from buses to grocery stores. It's almost impossible to survive as an undocumented immigrant, but that's exactly what sixteen-year-old Vali is doing. She and her family have carved out a stable, happy life in small-town Vermont, but when Vali's mother's counterfeit chip starts malfunctioning and the Deportation Forces raid their town, they are forced to flee.
Now on the run, Vali and her family are desperately trying to make it to her tía Luna's in California, a sanctuary state that is currently being walled off from the rest of the country. But when Vali's mother is detained before their journey even really begins, Vali must carry on with her younger brother across the country to make it to safety before it's too late.
Gripping and urgent, co-authors Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher have crafted a narrative that is as haunting as it is hopeful in envisioning a future where everyone can find sanctuary.
Excerpts-
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From the cover
Chapter 1
It took fifteen steps for her to die.
Fifteen—one for each year of her life before they snuffed it out.
I was supposed to be doing homework. I actually was doing homework, but my phone kept buzzing, so I tapped on the notifications, and there she was.
I never did learn her name. In the reports they would call her “an illegal fifteen-year-old” or “a fifteen-year-old immigrant.” It depended on who was talking.
The underground reporters would also call her brave, defiant, fearless.
And the government news would call her disease-ridden, illegal, criminal.
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But as I watched it with my own eyes, I saw that she was just a girl my age. Wearing a faded Mickey Mouse T-shirt and jean shorts that were rolled over on top but still looked like they might fall off her skinny waist. She had somehow gotten over a line of concrete ballasts and the chain-link fence stretching across the burnt-out field between Tijuana and San Diego. That rusty, mangled barricade that was supposed to keep people on the Tijuana side. It stood there as a scar. A reminder. A warning. Its sole purpose was to say
stay out. you don’t belong here.
That girl in the Mickey Mouse shirt had no time for warnings. She had no interest in being intimidated. She looked completely unafraid as she stepped away from the fence, entering the no-man’s-land between Mexico and the United States. The girl was alone, unarmed. Her dark hair was tied back in a bouncy ponytail, and she had a bright red scratch under her left eye. Besides that, her face looked clear, even calm, as she made her way across the dusty strip of scrubland between Tijuana and the wall.
Or really, the Wall. The Great American Wall.
There was nothing great about it. More like grotesque. It blocked out the sky, with fifty-foot-tall reinforced steel slats and thick metal mesh in between. Every few feet there were coils of barbed wire strung across, and on top there was a maze of cables spitting out electricity. The government had spent gazillions of dollars and called in all the Reserves to help build this monstrosity. Sealing us off from the rest of the Americas.
Stop where you are! snarled a voice through a speaker by the Wall.
Technically, that girl wasn’t even on United States soil. But as the President loved to say, America was the greatest nation in the history of greatness, and we needed to do whatever it took to protect our sacred borders. That was why there was a platoon of Border Patrol officers lined up on top of the Wall. Green zombies, I called them. Standing at attention in their olive-colored uniforms with pale, expressionless faces. They had the newest AK-87s strapped to their backs and German shepherds circling at their feet as they stared down that girl.
Because this was their land.
Because it was their duty to preserve and defend the United States of America.
Because whatever this fifteen-year-old intended, walking across in her flip-flops and saggy shorts, she had now become a national threat.
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I was so scared and awestruck by that girl’s slow, deliberate steps forward. I could even hear myself panting for her as I watched.
“Mi’ja, what are you doing?” Mami asked me. “If you’re done with your homework, get ready for bed.”
“Wait. You have to see this.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, Mami, you do,” my little brother, Ernie, said, padding in from the bathroom in his pj’s. Last I knew, he was watching soccer on his...
About the Author-
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Paola Mendoza is an author, film director, activist, and artist working at the leading edge of human rights. A co-founder of the Women’s March, she served as its artistic director. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Huffington Post, Glamour, Elle and InStyle. Paola is a co-founder of The Resistance Revival Chorus, The Soze Agency and The Meteor.
Abby Sher is an award-winning writer and performer. She is the author of Miss You Love You Hate You Bye, All the Ways the World Can End, Breaking Free, Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl Who Couldn't Stop Praying, and Kissing Snowflakes. One of her essays was included in the first season of Amazon TV's Modern Love. Abby has written and performed for the Second City, Upright Citizens Brigade, HBO, and NPR.
Reviews-
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Author Paola Mendoza communicates the traumatic experiences of immigrants seeking sanctuary as she narrates her own audiobook, coauthored with Abby Sher. In this near-future dystopian novel, Valentina Gonzalez Ramirez--known as Vali--lives in a world in which immigrants are subjected to intense scrutiny and abusive state-sanctioned policies. When governmental violence against immigrants escalates, Vali's family must flee and seek refuge in California. While keeping the pace moving in this action-packed story, Mendoza poignantly communicates the migrants' selfless protectiveness of their families and wrenching grief at the tragedies they endure. Her depiction of the cruelty they encounter is heartbreaking and all-too-imaginable. While the production has some distracting volume changes and muffled sounds, listeners will still be captivated by this terrifyingly plausible story. S.A.H. � AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from November 2, 2020
An unforgiving landscape punctuates an undocumented teen’s arduous journey to escape government persecution and find a safe haven in this searing near-future dystopian novel. For 16-year-old Colombian immigrant Valentina “Vali” González Ramirez, a life of safety and security hinges on a black-market implant “no bigger than a grain of rice.” In the year 2032, the U.S.—in the middle of an economic downturn—exerts considerable control over its population through censorship, xenophobic propaganda, and frequent scans of mandatory ID chips. Vali, who lost her father due to cruel deportation policies enacted by ICE, depends on a fake chip to avoid detection. When an incident at the U.S.-Mexico border leads to increased security measures and violence, Vali and her family attempt the dangerous trek from Vermont to a newly seceded California—and freedom. Coauthors Mendoza and Sher do delicate work, using Vali’s interior life and a speculative lens to lay bare the trauma and anguish that migrants to the U.S. can experience as well as the human capacity for survival. Though the novel’s unflinching honesty and real-world parallels deliver uncomfortable truths, its propulsive narrative and its message of hope and resilience will carry readers through. Ages 12–up.
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