Ink Knows No Borders by Patrice Vecchione & Alyssa Raymond

Author:Patrice Vecchione & Alyssa Raymond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: books for 12 year old girls, books for 12 year old boys, books for 13 year old girls, poetry books, literary fiction, teen fiction books, teen books for boys, books for 13 year old boys, poetry, teen books, young adult books, books for teens, Fiction, ya books, teen girl books, novels, fiction books, Young Adult, books for teen girls, literature, tween books for girls ages 11-14, teen boy books, teen books for girls, diversity, books fiction, books for teen boys, realistic fiction books, books for 14 year old girls
ISBN: 9781609809089
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2019-02-23T18:00:00+00:00

Gary Soto

Field Guide Ending in a Deportation

I confess to you my inadequacies. I want to tell you things I do not know about myself. I’ve made promises to people whom I will never see again. I’ve cried in an airport bathroom stall in El Paso, TX when immigration denied my father’s application. It felt like a mathematical equation—everything on one side needed to equal everything on the other. It almost made sense to be that sad. I am not compelled to complicate this metaphor. I’m selling this for two dollars. Years ago, on my birthday, I came out to my friends. I thought about the possibility of painting their portraits. What a stupid idea. I’ve started to cover up certain words with Barbie stickers in my journal. It occurs to me, sitting in my car, at a Dollar General parking lot, in search of cheap balloons for a party which I do not care about, that I am allowed my own joy. I pick the brightest balloons, pay, drive home and dress for the party. I mouth the words happy birthday to you in a dark room lit by everyone’s phone cameras. Afterwards, I enter all of my emails from five years into a cloud engine and the most used word is ok. I confess that I have had a good life. I spend many nights obsessing over the placement of my furniture. I give you my boredom. I give you my obligation. I give you the night I danced and danced and danced at a child’s birthday party, drunk and by myself. I’ve been someone else’s shame. It’s true, at its core, amá was deported because she was hit by a car. For years to come, this will be the ending of a sad joke she likes to tell. I laugh each time she tells the joke to strangers. Something about how there is more metal than bone in her arm. Something about a magnet. She says I thought I had died and death meant repeating a name forever. She says el jardin encierra la boca de mis pasos. But this is a bad translation. It’s more like I felt like a star, I felt like somebody famous.

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