Thank you to She Writes Press & NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available June 9th 2020.

I struggled with this book, not with the story but with the concepts behind them. In the foreward of this book, author Alma Luz Villanueva notes that she is hesitant about reading a book about the trauma of migration between Mexico and the United States by a non Hispanic white author but that she was persuaded by the afterword. As a curious reader, I quickly jumped to the afterword in which the author describes her work with Latinx students as well as her work with BorderLinks. She states "at this point in my life, I wanted to write about the undocumented immigrant community in a way that others could see through their eyes and experience and understand why they were driven to leave their homes and risk their lives to come to our country." And that's exactly the issue with Luz. The story is technically well written, vividly described, but it is not honest, true or empowering. Thomas's writing is just that, her writing, her American citizen's viewpoint of immigration and the story reeks of American savior complex. Perhaps if Luz was a different story, if it was Thomas tackling her native upstate New York family's racist viewpoints or her story as a working class woman who decided to work with undocumented persons, it would have felt more genuine.