Book Review: WHEN I WALK THROUGH THAT DOOR, I AM

Title: When I Walk Through That Door, I Am: An Immigrant Mother’s Quest for freedom
Author: Jimmy Santiago Baca
Publisher: Beacon Press
Pages: 88
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This story in verse, written in the first person PoV of Sophie, an immigrant mother, treated with brutality and callousness at every step of the way, is a powerful one. It builds a picture of a struggling family, helpless against circumstances beyond their control, reeling at the mercy of a shattered social order.

When Tonal, Sophie’s husband, is shot at outside their home in San Salvador because he wouldn’t pay off the gangs extorting half the paycheques of workers, she escapes with her 4-year-old son Joaquin strapped to her back to escape the wrath of the gangs.

But more hell awaits them. At every port and border they are met with hostility. There is no way ahead, and none behind. They are stripped of their humanity, seen only as carriers of disease, and as outlaws and criminals.

Through her harrowing ordeal, Sophie is gang-raped more than 4 times. She bears her oppression with none but the stones and dirt to bear witness. Only cacti and hundred-year-old cedars root in desert granite crevices counsel me in patience.

And after all that she is separated from her son at the US border.

 

As Sophie describes her struggle to build a life for herself and her son, her ordeal reminds us that Democracy’s body/ on the barbwire,/ a mangled prisoner/ trying to escape its torturers.

 

She hopes that America will open the door,/ invite us to your table/ welcome and respect/ and help and appreciate us,/ because that is what we did/…we warmed you at our fires,/ bedded you in warm blankets/ healed you, cured you/ cared for your children --/ open your hearts/ as we did ours.

The book is a hard-hitting accusation that convicts all those of us whose reaction is apathy, those of us who assuage their guilt with teddy bears and roses.

When I Walk Through That Door, I Am refers to the freedom she experiences when she is allowed to leave the detention centre. Her hope shines through as she looks forward to a reunion with her son. The book ends with Sophie promising to speak on your behalf, live on your behalf, and never give up searching for you.

The poem is not the only testimony this book bears within its pages. Through his personal experience with Sae Po, a refugee from Myanmar, the author reminds us that refugees make so much out of so little. The author not only gave Sae Po a job, and helped him to work towards building for himself a life in America, he also wrote the story of refugees around the world. I act, I engage, and I write.

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.)