CENTRAL AMERICAN MIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATES IN THE YOUNG ADULT NOVEL WE ARE NOT FROM HERE, BY JENNY TORRES SANCHEZ

Abstract

This article analyses We Are Not from Here (2020), a young adult novel by Jenny Torres Sanchez. The book follows the journey of three adolescents from Guatemala to the United States on top of La Bestia, the train that goes across Mexico. This article analyses the different narrative techniques that Torres Sanchez utilises to cover the themes and topics that structure the novel. The novel focuses on the network of altruistic solidarity that has bloomed all over Mexico to assist migrants while illustrating the brutality of an exhausting journey towards the north, a fact connected to the theoretical framework used to approach the text. Accordingly, diaspora theory (Bromley, Ashcroft et al., Brah, Fuentes Kraffczyk) will play a fundamental role in the following analysis exploring the way in which trauma, vulnerability and affect (Pollock, Tal, Butler, Ganteau, Thrailkill) complement each other in the text; and how the Latin American Gothic (Casanova-Vizcaíno and Ordiz) juxtaposes magical realism (Di Iorio Sandín and Perez, Murwood) in certain episodes.

Keywords

• Central American Migration
• Diaspora
• La Bestia
• Trauma
• Vulnerability
• Affect