Unaccompanied

Javier Zamora

Zamora’s debut cradles within it a family’s risky song of longing and love for a country torn apart by war and gang violence. These poems recall and are rooted in the experiences of a nine-year-old boy traveling alone for thousands of miles and confronting everywhere the realities of borderland politics, racism, and economic injustice. Calling into question the concept of the American Dream, Zamora reimagines home, fusing music and memory to address the quandaries that tear families apart and—if we’re lucky—inspire the building of lives anew.
 
Says Javier Zamora, “I think in the United States we forget that writing and carrying the banner of ‘being a poet’ is tied into a long history of people who have literally risked [their lives] and died to write those words.”

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ISBN: 9781556595110

Format: Paperback

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Saguaros

It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,
      like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.
And there, not the promised land but barbwire and barbwire

      with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk
after a bat said la sangre del saguaro nos seduce. Sometimes
      I wake and my throat is dry, so I drive to botanical gardens

to search for red fruits at the top of saguaros, the ones
      at dusk I threw rocks at for the sake of hunger.

But I never find them here. These bats speak English only.
      Sometimes in my car, that viscous red syrup
clings to my throat and I have to pull over—

      I also scraped needles first, then carved
those tall torsos for water, then spotlights drove me
      and thirty others dashing into paloverdes;

green-striped trucks surrounded us and our empty bottles
      rattled. When the trucks left, a cold cell swallowed us.

About the Author

Javier Zamora is a rising star in the literary world of the Americas. He was born in the small Salvadoran town of La Herradura and immigrated to the US at nine, joining his parents in California and growing up undocumented. Zamora earned his BA at UC Berkeley and his MFA at NYU, where he studied with Yusef Komunyakaa, Sharon Olds, and Charles Simic. Zamora’s first chapbook, Nueve Años Inmigrantes/Nine Immigrant Years, engaged with history, borders, and memory, winning the 2011 …

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Reviews

“Zamora details his experience emigrating from El Salvador to the U.S. at age nine in his timely and excellent debut, a heartbreaking account of leaving behind the grandmother who raised him to join parents he barely remembered.” —Publishers Weekly

“Zamora insists that the stories he houses in his blood deserve to be told, and in the telling he has created a truly astonishing debut.” —Rodney Gomez, Latino Book Review

“In [Nueve Años Immigrantes], he writes about living apart from his parents and then traveling alone over 4,000 miles across multiple borders to reunite with them as a nine-year-old. My students, Salvadoran in background or not, were amazed—they saw themselves and heard their families’ stories in these poems. Someone who looked and lived like them—young, immigrant, and undocumented—had written a book.” —Zócalo Public Square

“Although Javier Zamora was only 21 when he released his first acclaimed chapbook, the sophistication in these poems belies that fact. Every line resonates with a wind that crosses oceans.” —Jamaal May, Organic Weapon Arts

“Zamora’s work is real life turned into myth and myth made real life.” —Glappitnova

“By finding the language to describe the hardships of the Salvadoran Civil War, the nightmares of migration that seem to plague all Salvadorans, Zamora has begun the process of healing deep emotional scars…” —Muzzle Magazine

“Zamora’s debut collection chills the reader by letting his vulnerabilities bleed on page after page in such transfixing, honest lyricism…” —The Rumpus