In her memoir, My Side of the River, Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez tells a powerful, often heartbreaking story of being a "first gen" child of undocumented immigrants, forced to find her own way at a young age. She strikes a tone both reflective and urgent as she chronicles a childhood lived between Mexico and Tucson, Ariz., and the practical and emotional challenges she faced when her parents' visas expired and they were unable to return to the U.S.
Camarillo Gutierrez shares the ups and downs of her family's experiences: her parents' struggles to navigate life, housing, and their children's education in a foreign language, and the limited career options available to them in the U.S. Camarillo Gutierrez and her younger brother, Fernando, were told to focus on their schoolwork; the author's mother often told her, "You have to be the best." But when her parents were detained at the border, Camarillo Gutierrez suddenly became solely responsible for herself and Fernando, plus both of their educations. Before long, Fernando returned to Mexico to live with their parents, but Camarillo Gutierrez--determined to complete her education in Arizona--ended up sleeping on the couch of an acquaintance for months.
She describes the self-doubt, loneliness, and anxiety that plagued her, even as she remained a high-achieving student and received several prestigious awards. Building on her viral TED talk, Camarillo Gutierrez cracks open the "bootstrap" narrative to reveal the costs of such intense self-reliance, and calls on policymakers to reshape policies that nearly broke her family. Sharp, incisive, and often wryly funny, My Side of the River is a necessary addition to the complex conversation around immigration in the U.S. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams