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Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America, by Helen Thorpe
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Now updated, the powerful account of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver, two who have legal documentation, two who don’t, and what happens to them as a result.
Just Like Us tells the story of four high school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. We meet the girls on the eve of their senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. As the girls attempt to make it into college, they discover that only the legal pair sees a clear path forward. Their friendships start to divide along lines of immigration status.
Then the political firestorm begins. A Mexican immigrant shoots and kills a police officer. The author happens to be married to the Mayor of Denver, a businessman who made his fortune in the restaurant business. In a bizarre twist, the murderer works at one of the Mayor’s restaurants—under a fake Social Security number. A local Congressman seizes upon the murder as proof of all that is wrong with American society and Colorado becomes the place where national arguments over immigration rage most fiercely. The rest of the girls’ lives play out against this backdrop of intense debate over whether they have any right to live here.
Just Like Us is a coming-of-age story about girlhood and friendship, as well as the resilience required to transcend poverty. It is also a book about identity—what it means to steal an identity, what it means to have a public identity, what it means to inherit an identity from parents. The girls, their families, and the critics who object to their presence allow the reader to watch one of the most complicated social issues of our times unfurl in a major American city. And the perspective of the author gives the reader insight into both the most powerful and the most vulnerable members of American society as they grapple with the same dilemma: Who gets to live in America? And what happens when we don’t agree?
- Sales Rank: #75747 in Books
- Published on: 2011-05-03
- Released on: 2011-05-03
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.44" h x 1.00" w x 5.50" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 416 pages
From Publishers Weekly
By the time Marisela, Yadira, Clara and Elissa—four girls of Mexican descent from the suburbs of Denver—entered their freshman year in high school, they were inseparable, but four years later, their fundamental difference threatened to divide them: Clara and Elissa were legal residents, but Marisela and Yadira had begun to suffer the repercussions of their parents' choice to illegally enter the U.S. Journalist Thorpe, married to Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, met them as the girls without legal status were finding their friends' liberties—big and small—to attend college, drive or even rent a movie unbearable. It was hard for Marisela and Yadira to see why they should labor over their homework if they were just going to end up working at McDonald's, Thorpe writes. Marisela slid into trouble with ease, but Yadira found the experience profoundly disorienting. With striking candor, Thorpe chronicles the girls' lives over four years, delineating the small but arresting differences that will separate them and shape their futures. She personalizes the ongoing debate over immigration and frames it so compassionately and sensibly that even the staunchest opponents of immigration liberalization might find themselves rethinking their positions. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“Thorpe puts a human face on a frequently obtuse conversation, and in so doing takes us far beyond the political rhetoric." —O Magazine.
About the Author
Helen Thorpe was born in London and grew up in New Jersey. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, The New Yorker, Slate, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her radio stories have aired on This American Life and Sound Print. She is the author of Just Like Us and lives in Denver.
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 40 people found the following review helpful.
Double Standards Illustrate Illegals' Dilemmas
By Story Circle Book Reviews
Four Mexican girls, two legal immigrants born in the United States, and two illegals born in Mexico with legal siblings born in the US, grew up as best friends in junior high and high school. Just Like Us reads like a detective novel as Helen Thorpe shows how they cope with these similarities and differences--how they manage to get real or fake IDs, drivers' licenses, jobs, and college financial aid--all the while dealing with deported parents, boyfriends, and peer pressure. Finally, when an illegal immigrant teenager murders a Denver police officer, additional obstacles emerge to thwart their happy friendships as their differences become even more evident. As Thorpe, wife of Denver's mayor, relates, "All of us found ourselves in new territory, far from our point of origin. I didn't know what the rules were anymore."
Through reading this book, I learned to care about how these girls survived the conflicting laws in the US that seemed, for the most part, to prevent them from achieving the American dream. Thorpe relates to their dilemmas, having been an immigrant herself. She documents how their fiercest opponent, Tom Tancredo, himself offspring of immigrant grandparents, tries to gain political capital by blocking illegal immigrants from receiving decent educational programs, health care, and respect. At the same time, the Mexican immigrants--both legal and illegal--must pick fruit and vegetables, clean dirty buildings, and remodel other wealthy citizens' houses in order to survive.
As Thorpe weaves these girls' lives through the events swirling around them, I found myself staying up late to read one more chapter, or two, or three before going to sleep. Thorpe wrapped up this incomplete story with a question as there really is no ending to the dilemma of illegal immigration with its many personalities and complex rules. She asks "Did the idea of a country--an abstract concept, really--truly matter more than the sum happiness of all the individuals living without its boundaries? No, I thought. People mattered more than governments. In fact, this country was founded on that very idea."
by Susan M. Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Touching Portrait of Four Latino Girls
By Lynn Ellingwood
The author follows 4 girls from an urban Denver high school who are both Latina and good students. Two are legal immigrants and two are not. The girls follow the same path in trying to get to college but some are hampered by lack of eligibility of financial aid and cost of international tuition. How they cope in high school, college and beyond are the subject of this book. Even more interesting is how the families are affected around them. Imagine going back to Mexico and leaving your American born children here to fend for themselves or tell the older sibling to watch them. This book puts the story of illegal immigration onto human faces. Very interesting.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
No Easy Answers
By madbee
I especially wanted to read this book because I am an ESL teacher and I live in Denver. The author tells the story of four young Mexican American women who are good friends. It is their story but it is much more. It is the story of illegal immigrants and the many businesses who hire them, sometimes knowing that their documents are fake. It is the story of parent who are in the United States illegally and their children who are born here. It is the conflicting story of high school students who work hard and dream of going to college despite the obstacles some of them will face.
We meet them in their senior year. All are good students; two are legal and two are not. All four want to attend college, but the two without papers have problems figuring out how to pay for tuition without access to in-state tuition rates and financial aid. Thorpe describes the many dimensions of their lives, their academic experiences, their jobs, their families and their social lives.
Helen Thorpe also brings in the relevant political issues concerning immigration. She interviews Tom Tancredo, a former Colorado Congressman who has strong opinions about illegal immigration. Thorpe also describes various national votes and proposals and how they affect the girls and the possibilities for their futures in the United States.
Denver has many immigrants from many countries, but when the subject of immigrants comes up, many people think of Mexicans. And, even though Americans of Mexican descent share Colorado's history for generations, many people think of Mexicans as illegal.
Thorpe, as the Denver mayor's wife, is brought into the details of the shooting death of an off-duty policeman, working at a Mexican social club. The murderer, an illegal Mexican immigrant, was working in one of the restaurants partly owned by the mayor. Thorpe goes behind the tabloid headlines, and discovers that the policeman's mother was from Mexico and that the people at the party did everything they could to help after the shooting. Thorpe shows how the news accounts lumped the entire Mexican community together with the offender.
This is a thoughtful book that shows why there are no easy answers to these problems.
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