Tell Me How It Ends

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fearboth here and back home. Valeria Luiselli was born Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A novelist (The Story of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeneys. This project made possible with special funding from the Fringe Foundation. Reviews Winner of a 2018 American Book Award Nonfiction Finalist for the Kirkus Prize Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism "As in her hallucinatory and inventive fiction, Luiselli proves her skill as a storyteller while grappling with her own questions of nationalism." The New Yorker Luisellis awareness of a storys ability to restrict informs the books judicious use of these childrens lives, as well as its quietly brilliant structure as a series of responses to the questionnaire, which Luiselli describes as a reflection of a colder, more cynical and brutal reality. . . . The account that emerges has no fixed origin, and the crisis, as Luiselli wisely points out, belongs not to any specific country or countries but to all of us living in this corner of the world. New York Times Sunday Book Review This is a vital document for understanding the crisis that immigrants to the U.S. are facing, and a call to action for those who find this situation appalling. Publisher's Weekly Luiselli effectively humanizes the plights of those who have been demonized or who have been reduced to faceless numbers . . . A powerful call to action and to empathy. Kirkus These days, the whole world, including our politics, is being shaped by migration. Few people explore the nuances of this reality more skillfully than Valeria Luiselli, a strikingly gifted 33-year-old Mexican writer who knows the migratory experience first-hand. . . . Luiselli takes us inside the grand dream of migration, offering the valuable reminder that exceedingly few immigrants abandon their past and brave death to come to America for dark or nasty reasons. They come as an expression of hope. NPR Tell Me How It Ends draws from Luisellis experience working as an interpreter for child migrants and is structured around the questionnaire she would guide them through. The contrast between the intimacy of their experiences and the impersonality of the system theyve been thrown into illuminates the horrors of our immigration system. Literary Hub Valeria Luiselli's latest book, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions, is unsparing in its portrayal of vulnerability and determination. Rolling Stone This moving, intimate narrative about the migration of children from Central America is based in part on the authors experience as a volunteer court translator. New York Times Sunday Book Review Tell Me How It Ends is a remarkable little work that, through its narrow lens, says more about the country than books ten times its size. GQ With anger and lucidity, Luiselli depicts the nightmares these children are forced to flee in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, as well as the destructive ignorance and bigotry that awaits them in America. . . . With a beguiling mixture of compassion and intellectual rigor, she gives her readers the chance to look. Chicago Tribune So true and moving that it filled me with hopeless hope. The Guardian "...Tell Me How It Ends is a book of staggering emotional power and an incitement to deep shame." Harper's Mexico-born author Val

Valeria Luiselli was born Mexico City and 1983 and grew up in South Africa. A award-winning novelist (The Story of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeney's.