Reflections on migration from Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions, by Valeria Luiselli

Abstract

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Mexican writer Valeria Luiselli (1983), addresses one of the issues that most affect society today: migration. Luiselli reflects on the forced displacement of undocumented Central American children who cross the border between Mexico and the United States in order to escape from the violence of their countries. The author presents the history of several infants from the questionnaire applied by the Federal Immigration Court of New York. The book is structured in four parts that include the forty questions that are asked to minors who travel alone and wish to remain in US territory. The children interviewed give an account of a mosaic of stories of poverty, loneliness and inequality. This paper studies the way in which migration is presented in a literary work of an author who writes from outside her country.