Each year at Fieldston, the English Department carefully selects a book to be the high school-wide read. Past works have included Elizabeth Alexander’s Trayvon Generation and James Baldwin’s “The Fire Next Time”. This year, it chose Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends, a book that illustrates the experience of migrant children risking their lives to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, uniquely told through questions and answers from an immigration intake questionnaire. The story explores the physical border between these two countries, its metaphorical meaning and what it means to cross this threshold into the American Dream.
English classes at Fieldston focus on a particular theme or question depending on the grade. Form III English examines the construction of a hero, the power of gods and fate and relationships between parent and child. Form IV English investigates the multi-dimensional experience of being an American and what carrying on the American legacy means for students and future generations. Form V and VI English allow students to expose themselves to a vast swathe of beautiful works in their chosen literature. Some of their course options include Nineteenth-Century English Literature, Poetry, Epic Traditions, Russian Literature and more. So, how does Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends communicate themes that can relate to what being a hero truly means, the American legacy or other ideas and morals that can reach students across all ages in the Upper School?
Mia Newman (Form V) commented, “I think that Tell Me How it Ends was chosen as the High School-wide read because the issues that are presented in this story are issues that we need to examine as a community, and not just in an individual class or grade. Luiselli poses a call to action in her book; she urges not just people in general but the younger generation to fight for justice for undocumented immigrants, understand their stories and try to create change…Fieldston was hoping to inspire students to create the change that Luiselli is pointing out.”
Echoing that sentiment, Form IV English teacher Ms. Stabenau stated that the entire Upper School reading this book ensures “that all of us are aware of a conflict that’s playing out right in front of our eyes, in our neighborhoods right here in New York, and that is deeply intertwined with our own lives — but that many of us have the luxury of ignoring.”
Both here at Fieldston and in the country as a whole, no matter our race, socioeconomic class or religion, being an American ties us all together. We all contribute to the American experience, making it beautiful and multi-faceted. Ms. Stabenau adds, “Luiselli is showing us an important American story, one that makes us think about who is and is not allowed to become American, and why, and what that even means. And she shows us how that plays out not only in our legal systems, but also in the media and in our community life – the way we relate to one another.”
Luiselli writes her book through the questions on an intake questionnaire, sharing the migrant children’s answers. This questionnaire’s primary purpose from a legal perspective is to help determine which children get to stay in America and which will be forced to return to their home countries, lands of danger and unspeakable violence. However, structuring the book through these questions allows Luiselli to narrate different experiences, each holding profound meanings. Saskia Sommer (Form IV) explains, “I think that formatting the book as a questionnaire allowed readers to experience a more visceral sense of the book’s message. Luiselli herself works as a translator and interpreter for migrant children applying for asylum or SIJ (Special Immigrant Juvenile) status, and the question format allows her to not only contextualize this role but show that questions that are seemingly facile lend themselves to a variety of stories, answers, and experiences.”
It is essential to note the recent series of significant immigration events to help contextualize the publication of Luselli’s book and our understanding of it. In 2012, former US President Barack Obama passed DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, otherwise known as “Dreamers”) through Executive Order. DACA protects those who came to the US illegally as children from being deported back to their home country and to receive special work permits to study and work in the US. In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president, running on a campaign to severely secure US borders against migrants. In March of 2017, Luiselli released Tell Me How It Ends. Six months later, Trump terminated DACA. In April 2020 in response to the COVID pandemic, the federal government enacted the public health restriction Title 42, which gave authorities the right to quickly stop and expel all migrant border crossings, even those seeking asylum until the end of the pandemic. Later that year, the US Supreme Court ruled that Trump did not follow procedure to overturn DACA and reinstated DACA since Title 42 was not supposed to impact families with children. In May 2023, Title 42 officially expired. Since then, thousands of migrants, a huge increase from previous years, have been bused from other Southern states to New York City, one of several sanctuary cities, a loose legal term that allows local law enforcement to not abide by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and obligates the city to provide shelter to all homeless migrants.
With the recent end of Title 42 and NYC’s role as an important sanctuary city, Mayor Eric Adams earlier this fall declared the migrant situation a “state of emergency” and a “humanitarian crisis” as New York City runs out of resources. The city, which has been housing migrants in homeless shelters, hotels and schools, recently with more federal and state government aid, built outdoor tents in Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field. So, has the lens through which we look shifted concerning DACA and the broader migrant crisis, primarily from reading Luiselli’s book? Sommer goes on to argue, “I think that reading and educating oneself on a certain subject or topic will always lend itself to the ability to have more nuanced discussion about said topic, but I also believe that it is important to perpetually consider the needs of migrants in the United States, no matter the current status quo.”
