Review: Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40
Questions
For this reflection journal, you will answer the following prompt on a
Microsoft Word document and submit it to your instructor for feedback.
These reflections are an opportunity to reflect on the knowledge that you
are gaining and how you will apply this knowledge to your practice and
receive feedback from your instructor.
Reflection Journal 1 Prompt:
Consider the opening line of the book Luiselli (2017) Tell me how it ends: An
essay in forty questions. “In Tell me how it ends there are no answers, only
more questions. Reflect on your response to reading this book. What
questions did this book raise for you? How do you see the role of the APN
(Advanced Practice Nurse) in addressing these questions?
On her first day working with undocumented children in New York’s
immigration court, Valeria Luiselli sits at a mahogany table with Manu,
a 16-year-old boy who recently fled Honduras alone for the United
States. Manu shrugs often as Luiselli asks him the 40 questions on the
intake questionnaire, queries he must answer to help lawyers
determine whether he might be deemed eligible for “potential relief” or
deported by a judge.
“I’m no policewoman,” Luiselli, a native of Mexico, tries to reassure him.
“I’m no official anyone, I’m not even a lawyer. I’m also not a gringa, you
know? In fact, I can’t help you at all. But I can’t hurt you, either.”
“So why are you here then?” he asks.
“I’m just here to translate for you,” she tells him.
Luiselli may have started as “just a translator,” but the heartbreaking
nature of the stories she heard during her volunteer gig in 2015 drove
her to take on a much deeper role: chronicler of the children’s lives, so
that they are not ignored or forgotten.
, Luckily, the children have a capable narrator, as Luiselli demonstrates in
her brief yet remarkable book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty
Questions (Coffee House Press, April 2017). Through poetic and often
haunting prose, Luiselli ultimately raises even more thorny questions
about an already complicated issue.
The facts: Between April 2014 and August 2015, more than 102,000
unaccompanied children were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, so
many that the U.S. government declared it a crisis. And they are still
coming. Most of the children come from Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras, and Luiselli notes that nearly all are fleeing gang violence.
The children typically make the journey with a coyote, someone paid to
smuggle them across the border. They cross Mexico with that coyote,
often riding on “La Bestia,” or “the beast,” their name for the freight
trains that as many as half a million Central American migrants ride
annually, sitting dangerously atop the railcars because there are no
passenger services.
Along the way, the children must avoid corrupt policemen and soldiers
and drug gangs seeking to enslave or murder them. If they do make it to
the U.S. border, they typically turn themselves in to Border Patrol,
because being formally detained is much safer than attempting to cross
the desert beyond the border alone. Border Patrol then places them in
an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center,
commonly known as the “icebox.”
While detained, these children start looking for their parents or other
relatives in the U.S. who might sponsor them. But even if they make it
to their sponsor, they still have to appear in court to defend
themselves against deportation, a defense they can make only if they
are lucky enough to find a lawyer willing to take on their case pro-bono.
Which is where the intake questionnaire comes into play. The children’s
answers to seemingly basic questions about their situations could
potentially provide valid reasons why the U.S. government might allow
them to stay. But even the first question — “Why did you come to the
United States?” — often doesn’t have a straightforward answer.
The children’s answers, Luiselli writes, often reveal “the unthinkable
circumstances” they are fleeing: “extreme violence, persecution and
coercion by gangs, mental and physical abuse, forced labor, neglect,
Questions
For this reflection journal, you will answer the following prompt on a
Microsoft Word document and submit it to your instructor for feedback.
These reflections are an opportunity to reflect on the knowledge that you
are gaining and how you will apply this knowledge to your practice and
receive feedback from your instructor.
Reflection Journal 1 Prompt:
Consider the opening line of the book Luiselli (2017) Tell me how it ends: An
essay in forty questions. “In Tell me how it ends there are no answers, only
more questions. Reflect on your response to reading this book. What
questions did this book raise for you? How do you see the role of the APN
(Advanced Practice Nurse) in addressing these questions?
On her first day working with undocumented children in New York’s
immigration court, Valeria Luiselli sits at a mahogany table with Manu,
a 16-year-old boy who recently fled Honduras alone for the United
States. Manu shrugs often as Luiselli asks him the 40 questions on the
intake questionnaire, queries he must answer to help lawyers
determine whether he might be deemed eligible for “potential relief” or
deported by a judge.
“I’m no policewoman,” Luiselli, a native of Mexico, tries to reassure him.
“I’m no official anyone, I’m not even a lawyer. I’m also not a gringa, you
know? In fact, I can’t help you at all. But I can’t hurt you, either.”
“So why are you here then?” he asks.
“I’m just here to translate for you,” she tells him.
Luiselli may have started as “just a translator,” but the heartbreaking
nature of the stories she heard during her volunteer gig in 2015 drove
her to take on a much deeper role: chronicler of the children’s lives, so
that they are not ignored or forgotten.
, Luckily, the children have a capable narrator, as Luiselli demonstrates in
her brief yet remarkable book Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty
Questions (Coffee House Press, April 2017). Through poetic and often
haunting prose, Luiselli ultimately raises even more thorny questions
about an already complicated issue.
The facts: Between April 2014 and August 2015, more than 102,000
unaccompanied children were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border, so
many that the U.S. government declared it a crisis. And they are still
coming. Most of the children come from Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Honduras, and Luiselli notes that nearly all are fleeing gang violence.
The children typically make the journey with a coyote, someone paid to
smuggle them across the border. They cross Mexico with that coyote,
often riding on “La Bestia,” or “the beast,” their name for the freight
trains that as many as half a million Central American migrants ride
annually, sitting dangerously atop the railcars because there are no
passenger services.
Along the way, the children must avoid corrupt policemen and soldiers
and drug gangs seeking to enslave or murder them. If they do make it to
the U.S. border, they typically turn themselves in to Border Patrol,
because being formally detained is much safer than attempting to cross
the desert beyond the border alone. Border Patrol then places them in
an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center,
commonly known as the “icebox.”
While detained, these children start looking for their parents or other
relatives in the U.S. who might sponsor them. But even if they make it
to their sponsor, they still have to appear in court to defend
themselves against deportation, a defense they can make only if they
are lucky enough to find a lawyer willing to take on their case pro-bono.
Which is where the intake questionnaire comes into play. The children’s
answers to seemingly basic questions about their situations could
potentially provide valid reasons why the U.S. government might allow
them to stay. But even the first question — “Why did you come to the
United States?” — often doesn’t have a straightforward answer.
The children’s answers, Luiselli writes, often reveal “the unthinkable
circumstances” they are fleeing: “extreme violence, persecution and
coercion by gangs, mental and physical abuse, forced labor, neglect,
