Leaving is a kind of death~ from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
In exquisite writing and storytelling, Infinite Country explores love that transcends borders and separation, the bifurcated identity of those who have left their homeland for new countries, the longing and sorrow of family separation, and the myth of American Dream.
Award-winning author Patricia Engel's moving story elicits compassion and an awareness that there are no safe havens except in a family's love.
People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics--the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
In Bogota, during a violent time in Columbia, teenagers Mauro and Elena fall in love. They have a child and move to the United States hoping for a better life. When Mauro is arrested and deported, Elena decides to stay in America with Talia, born in Colombia, and their American born son and daughter. When she finds she cannot work with the newborn girl, she sends Talia back to her mother and husband to raise in Bogota. Years pass with the family separated, growing apart.
What was it about this country that kept us hostage to its fantasy? The previous month, on its own soil, an American man went to his job at a plant and gunned down fourteen coworkers, and last spring along there were four different school shootings. A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
The American children feel alien in an America that fears and diminishes Latinos, living in overcrowded apartments filled with illegals, targeted with hate, their mother abused by bosses. They do not see America as a haven and envy their sister in Columbia, living with their father.
But every nation in the Americas had a hidden history of internal violence. It just wore different masks, carried different weapons, and justified itself with different stories.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
Talia, loves her grandmother and father, but longs to know her mother and siblings. Mauro tells Talia the stories and myths of their Andean people about the jaguar, the boa constrictor, the condor, the creation story he was told, including the lesson "we're all migrants here on earth."
When Talia sees a vicious act and reacts rashly, she is arrested and, only age fifteen, is sent to a school in the mountains for six months. She escapes and must find her way across the mountains to her father and an airline ticket to her birthplace--America.
This is a story with a happy ending. The journey is fraught and long and difficult. Each person must forgive and hold on to the one place they belong: in each other's loving arms.
That night I thought about how love comes paired with failure, apologies for deficiencies. The only remedy is compassion.~from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
I love this novel. The gorgeous writing, the way tears welled when I felt the loneliness of people losing connection without losing their love and commitment. The beauty of the Colombian land.
One night Elena dreamed they were back on the roof of Perla's house. She stood with Maruo and the three children under the aluminium sky, gossamer clouds pushed to the mountain crests, the church of Monserrate like a merengue atop its peak. In her dreams, they'd never left their land. ~ from Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
Americans must face the depicted reality of our prejudice and laws, the way we dehumanize immigrants. How we are not better than countries we consider less free.
This is a small book in size, but large in heart and vision, a stunning gem of a read.
I received a book from the publisher through a Goodreads giveaway in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
ISBN13: 9781982159467
from the publisher
“A knockout of a novel…we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021’s best.” —O, The Oprah Magazine
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, GMA, New York Post, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, Electric Literature, LitHub, AARP, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, She Reads, Alma, and more.
I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.
Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.
How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since.
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America?
Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret, and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.
about the author
Patricia Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, New York Times Notable Book, and winner of Colombia’s national book award, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.
I just finished this too and thought it was a wonderful depiction of the double edged sword of immigration.There was so much to think about as they navigated their way, so many ups and downs and always the tension of not knowing what was ahead.
ReplyDeleteeven the sudden change of narrator felt to me like a metaphor for deportation, the shock and suddenness of it, throwing the reader into a spin, until we too adapt to the new condition. Brilliant.
Nice summary and I love your insight about the narrative switch
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