Skip to main content

Shelter by Arturo Hernandez-Sametier: book review


 


Shelter: Notes from a Detained Migrant Children's Facility (2020) is set in America at a border detention shelter after children are arrested for entering the United States without papers.

 

The author is a high-trauma therapist, documenting the daily lives of 14 unaccompanied children, from the time the U.S. Border Patrol arrests them to the time they are released from a detention facility. ‘We had twenty-four hours to vaccinate, provide clothing, get full background, call home … and four hours to report and address trauma.’

 

They are all minors, aged from pre-school to teenagers. They each have a case worker. One is a deaf, mute Mayan girl; one is a teenager from India who walked thousands of miles to reach America; and another is a 16-year-old Guatemalan boy. 

 

Shelter is not prison, but for the unaccompanied minors, it is not home. It is a place to get a medical assessment and assistance. 

 

Their situational tales are brief, and so is this book. If they were characters in a novel, there would be no depth to them, but this is reality, and readers don’t follow their lives. But readers do get a glimpse of where the detained migrant children came from and why they are on their way to the promised land of America. This is a rare description of an immigration shelter and the people who work there, complete with the necessary processes that enable each child to move forward with their lives.





 

 

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.


MARTINA NICOLLS

Website

Martinasblogs

Publications

Facebook

Paris Website

Animal Website

Flower Website

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 

 

 

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing
1 comment
Read more