American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

 

Why do people leave their country? Why do they risk their life and families lives to try to get to the border of the United States? Why can't they just make things work in their own country?

These are tough questions and questions that we truthfully cannot answer. We are not experiencing what they experience. We do not live where they have lived and seen the horrors that they have seen. In a way I admire what they put themselves through to get here.

This book follows a few different families and what has led them to try and make a new home in the United States. They have lost their entire family to cartels or been raped and injured to the point that they have to leave. They leave everything they know behind in hopes of finding something better.

Some of the situations they go through seem almost too much to bear, much worse that what they were going through, but it isn't. To live a life in constant fear of gangs and cartels, to never know if every time your loved one leaves the house whether you may see them again.

This is a very difficult subject and one that is really in our faces right now. These immigrants feel it is worth the danger to leave. Why aren't the countries they come from doing anything? Why are these countries not protecting their citizens? So many questions and not enough answers. How many lives need to be lost before there is an acceptable answer?

I feel that Cummins presented this story in a way that we can start to see the struggle. We can see the hardships on both ends. I felt for the characters and I was tense and angry and worried and relieved. So many emotions that I just read off of a page that these people endure everyday. If you want a glimpse into what immigrants coming to this country through Mexico is like take the time to read this and really think about the whole situation.