The Other Side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border [Paperback]

Award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos explores illegal immigration with this emotionally raw and timely nonfiction book about ten Central American teens and their journeys to the United States.

You can't really tell what time it is when you're in the freezer.

Every year, thousands of migrant children and teens cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The journey is treacherous and sometimes deadly, but worth the risk for migrants who are escaping gang violence and poverty in their home countries. And for those refugees whodosucceed? They face an immigration process that is as winding and multi-tiered as the journey that brought them here.

In this book, award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos strings together the diverse experiences of eleven real migrant teenagers, offering readers a beginning road map to issues facing the region. These timely accounts of courage, sacrifice, and survivalincluding two fourteen-year-old girls forming a tenuous friendship as they wait in a frigid holding cell, a boy in Chicago beginning to craft his future while piecing together his past in El Salvador, and cousins learning to lift each other up through angry watersoffer a rare and invaluable window into the U.S.Central American refugee crisis.

In turns optimistic and heartbreaking,The Other Sidebalances the boundless hope at the center of immigration with the weight of its risks and repercussions. Here is a necessary read for young people on both sides of the issue.

Award-winning Mexican author Juan Pablo Villalobos explores illegal immigration with this emotionally raw and timely nonfiction book about 10 Central American teens and their journeys to the United States.Juan Pablo Villaloboswas born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1973. He has written literary criticism, film criticism, and short stories. Villalobos has penned multiple books, includingDown the Rabbit Hole, which has been translated intl³*