Tell Me How It Ends, Valeria Luiselli
Tell Me How It Ends, Valeria Luiselli
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Tell Me How It Ends
An Essay in 40 Questions

Author: Valeria Luiselli

Narrator: Laurence Bouvard

Unabridged: 2 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/06/2018


Synopsis

A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US.

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear-both here and back home.

"Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis-and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency." -Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books

"Valeria Luiselli's extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. It's a rare thing: a book everyone should read." -Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

"Tell Me How It Ends evokes empathy as it educates. It is a vital contribution to the body of post-Trump work being published in early 2017." -Katharine Solheim, Unabridged Bookstore

"While this essay is brilliant for exactly what it depicts, it helps open larger questions, which we're ever more on the precipice of now, of where all of this will go, how all of this might end. Is this a story, or is this beyond a story? Valeria Luiselli is one of those brave and eloquent enough to help us see." -Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company

"Appealing to the language of the United States' fraught immigration policy, Luiselli exposes the cracks in this foundation. Herself an immigrant, she highlights the human cost of its brokenness, as well as the hope that it (rather than walls) might be rebuilt." -Brad Johnson, Diesel Bookstore

"The bureaucratic labyrinth of immigration, the dangers of searching for a better life, all of this and more is contained in this brief and profound work. Tell Me How It Ends is not just relevant, it's essential." -Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore

About The Author

VALERIA LUISELLI was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. An award-winning novelist (The Story of My Teeth and Faces in the Crowd) and essayist (Sidewalks), her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the New Yorker, Granta, and McSweeney's.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane on April 12, 2025

An absolutely haunting but necessary book-length essay on children who cross into the US as undocumented immigrants. It’s really damning to see how relevant this book is today and how, in fact, immigration has become an even more dire prospect today.......more

Goodreads review by Adam on June 09, 2017

Sharp, short essay that shines a light on how America treats undocumented children. Luiselli, who's an excellent writer (though emotion veers in and out of this piece in unusual cadence), has worked in the federal immigration system as a translator and cannily structures the essay around the 40 ques......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on June 29, 2019

An unsentimental yet compassionate book that centers the ongoing plight of Latin American child migrants in the United States. Valeria Luiselli uses her role as a translator for these children to explore the many misconceptions people have about them (e.g., they’re rapists or drug dealers) and refle......more

Goodreads review by El Librero de Valentina on March 31, 2024

Gran trabajo hace la autora al describir la situación de cientos de miles de niños migrantes. Un tema que, desgraciadamente, nos atraviesa de punta a punta. Triste saber que buscan una mejor calidad de vida en otro lugar ya que el suyo es incapaz de proporcionárselas.......more

Goodreads review by Rincey on December 08, 2018

The children who cross the Mexico border and arrive at the U.S. border are not "immigrants," not "illegals," not merely "undocumented minors." Those children are refugees of a war, and, as such, they should all have the right to asylum. But not all of them have it. Tell me how it ends, Mamma, my daug......more