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4th Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019
Copyright © Valeria Luiselli
Cover design by Jo Walker.
Valeria Luiselli asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and Aragi, Inc.: Excerpt of “Father’s Old Blue Cardigan” from Men in the Off Hours by Anne Carson, copyright © 2000 by Anne Carson. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, and Aragi, Inc. All rights reserved.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company: Excerpt of “Little Sleep’s Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight” from Collected Poems by Galway Kinnell. Copyright © 2017 by The Literary Estate of Galway Kinnell, LLC. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
International Editors’ Co., on behalf of Bárbara Jacobs and María Monterroso: “El Dinosaurio” by Augusto Monterroso, copyright © 1959 by Augusto Monterroso. Reprinted by permission of International Editors’ Co., on behalf of Bárbara Jacobs and María Monterroso.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008290054
Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008290030
Version: 2020-01-17
To Maia and Dylan
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
PART I: FAMILY SOUNDSCAPE
Relocations
Box I
Routes & Roots
Box II
Undocumented
Box III
Missing
Box IV
Removals
PART II: REENACTMENT
Deportations
Maps & Boxes
Box V
Continental Divide
Lost
PART III: APACHERIA
Dust Valleys
Heart of Light
Echo Canyon
PART IV: LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE
Box VI
Document
Box VII
Works Cited
Illustration Credits
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Valeria Luiselli
About the Publisher
An archive presupposes an archivist, a hand that collects and classifies.
—ARLETTE FARGE
To leave is to die a little.
To arrive is never to arrive.
—MIGRANT PRAYER
DEPARTURE
Mouths open to the sun, they sleep. Boy and girl, foreheads pearled with sweat, cheeks red and streaked white with dry spit. They occupy the entire space in the back of the car, spread out, limbs offering, heavy and placid. From the copilot seat, I glance back to check on them every so often, then turn around again to study the map. We advance in the slow lava of traffic toward the city limits, across the GW Bridge, and merge onto the interstate. An airplane passes above us and leaves a straight long scar on the palate of the cloudless sky. Behind the wheel, my husband adjusts his hat, dries his forehead with the back of his hand.
FAMILY LEXICON
I don’t know
