At Age 9, Poet Javier Zamora Migrated from El Salvador Alone. In 'Solito,' He Tells that Story

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When he was 9, poet Javier Zamora traveled 3,000 miles by bus, boat and on foot, without family or friends, from El Salvador to the United States. The trip was supposed to take two weeks. It tooknine. Along the way, Zamora was embraced by fellow migrants and folded into a makeshift family. With them, Zamora encountered corrupt police officers and was robbed of the little money he had. He scrambled over mountains and under barbed wire fences that laced the desert border, all so he could be reunited with his parents who lived in Marin and who he had not seen in years. Thousandsof immigrants, including children, have experienced similar journeys, but few have described them as eloquently as Zamora. We’ll talk to Zamora about those nine weeks to the border, which he recounts in his new memoir “Solito,” and his experience as an immigrant growing up in San Rafael. Guests: Javier Zamora, Author of the memoir "Solito," Zamora has been a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His debut poetry collection, which focuses on the impact of war and immigration on his family, is titled "Unaccompanied." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:00.0	From KQD in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal. Javier Zamora arrived in San Rafael at 9, stepping off the bus in the shadow of 101.
1:05.0	His parents had arrived years earlier from El Salvador and had begun to make a life in the canal,
1:10.0	the island of immigrants marooned on the shoreline of Marin's Ocean of Wealth.
1:14.9	Javier had spent the previous years living with his grandparents and Tia in a small town
1:19.5	on an estuary near the Pacific coast.
1:21.9	The time between leaving that town and arriving in San Rafael, two weeks that turned into two
1:26.5	months has haunted Zamora for more than two decades.
1:29.9	His new book, Solito, feels like a way of casting out the demons
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