enrique's journey audio

• Biographies & Memoirs
• Latin America

Enjoy a free trial on us P.when("A", "a-expander", "ready").execute(function(A, expander) { A.on("a:accordion:buybox-accordion:select", function(data) { // Change active accordion pricing to APEX pricing A.$("#buyBoxAccordion").find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_show").addClass("adbl_bb_price_hide"); A.$(data.selectedRow.$row).find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_hide").addClass("adbl_bb_price_show"); //initialize accordion expander expander.initializeExpanders(); }); }); /* Display price in a table block so it does not overflow, ref: https://t.corp.amazon.com/D76383263 */ #adbl_bb_price { display: table; } /* APEX Pricing for Mobile & MobileApp */ .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 38px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 24px; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 15px !important; line-height: 26px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 10px; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } /* APEX Pricing for Desktop */ #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 21px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 21px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 16px; top:-10px !important; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 12px !important; line-height: 9px; } $0.00 $ 0 . 00

• Click above for unlimited listening to select audiobooks, Audible Originals, and podcasts.
• One credit a month to pick any title from our entire premium selection — yours to keep (you'll use your first credit now).
• You will get an email reminder before your trial ends.
• $14.95 $14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel online anytime.

Buy P.when("A", "a-expander", "ready").execute(function(A, expander) { A.on("a:accordion:buybox-accordion:select", function(data) { // Change active accordion pricing to APEX pricing A.$("#buyBoxAccordion").find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_show").addClass("adbl_bb_price_hide"); A.$(data.selectedRow.$row).find(".accordion-header div#adbl_bb_price") .removeClass("adbl_bb_price_hide").addClass("adbl_bb_price_show"); //initialize accordion expander expander.initializeExpanders(); }); }); /* Display price in a table block so it does not overflow, ref: https://t.corp.amazon.com/D76383263 */ #adbl_bb_price { display: table; } /* APEX Pricing for Mobile & MobileApp */ .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 36px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 38px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 24px; } .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 15px !important; line-height: 26px; } .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: table-caption; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 10px; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobile_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; top: -15px !important; } #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #mobileapp_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block !important; } /* APEX Pricing for Desktop */ #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 24px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .adbl_bb_savings_percent { color: #CC0C39; font-size: 21px; font-weight: 300; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_pay_price { font-weight: 400; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-whole { font-size: 28px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-whole { font-size: 21px; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_show .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 13px !important; line-height: 16px; top:-10px !important; } #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-symbol, #desktop_buybox .adbl_bb_price_hide .a-price-fraction { display: inline-block; font-size: 12px !important; line-height: 9px; } -13% $18.13 $ 18 . 13

Enrique's journey audible audiobook – unabridged.

When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade.

Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled.

With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother's side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte - the Train of Death.

Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope - and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.

Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

• Listening Length 10 hours and 56 minutes
• Author Sonia Nazario
• Narrator Catherine Byers
• Audible release date September 24, 2008
• Language English
• Publisher Audible Studios
• ASIN B001GPJW6G
• Version Unabridged
• Program Type Audiobook
• See all details

People who viewed this also viewed

People who bought this also bought

Related to this topic

Product details

Customer reviews.

Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.

Reviews with images

• Sort reviews by Top reviews Most recent Top reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. please try again later..

Top reviews from other countries

• Amazon Newsletter
• About Amazon
• Accessibility
• Sustainability
• Press Center
• Investor Relations
• Amazon Devices
• Amazon Science
• Sell on Amazon
• Sell apps on Amazon
• Supply to Amazon
• Protect & Build Your Brand
• Become an Affiliate
• Become a Delivery Driver
• Start a Package Delivery Business
• Advertise Your Products
• Self-Publish with Us
• Become an Amazon Hub Partner
• › See More Ways to Make Money
• Amazon Visa
• Amazon Store Card
• Amazon Secured Card
• Amazon Business Card
• Shop with Points
• Credit Card Marketplace
• Reload Your Balance
• Amazon Currency Converter
• Your Account
• Your Orders
• Shipping Rates & Policies
• Amazon Prime
• Returns & Replacements
• Manage Your Content and Devices
• Recalls and Product Safety Alerts
• Conditions of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Consumer Health Data Privacy Disclosure
• Your Ads Privacy Choices

Learn About

• Arts & Entertainment
• Education & Professional
• Religion & Spirituality
• Self Development
• Social Sciences
• Sports & Hobbies

Free Audio Book

  Get this audio book:

Learn more about, find more titles by.

Video About This Audio Book

Title Details

Description, people who liked enrique's journey also liked these free titles:.

Enrique's Journey

By: Sonia Nazario

• Narrated by: Catherine Byers
• Length: 10 hrs and 56 mins
• 4.2 out of 5 stars 4.2 (715 ratings)

Failed to add items

Add to cart failed., add to wish list failed., remove from wishlist failed., adding to library failed, follow podcast failed, unfollow podcast failed.

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.72

No default payment method selected.

We are sorry. we are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method, listeners also enjoyed....

The House on Mango Street

By: Sandra Cisneros

• Narrated by: Sandra Cisneros
• Length: 2 hrs and 18 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,225
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,797
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,792

Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong, not to her rundown neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.

• 1 out of 5 stars

Spare yourself

• By Fred on 04-08-10

The Sojourn

By: Andrew Krivak

• Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki
• Length: 5 hrs and 29 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 46
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 39
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 39

The Sojourn is the story of Jozef Vinich, who was uprooted from a 19th-century mining town in Colorado by a family tragedy and returns with his father to an impoverished shepherd’s life in rural Austria-Hungary. When World War One comes, Jozef joins his adopted brother as a sharpshooter in the Kaiser’s army, surviving a perilous trek across the frozen Italian Alps and capture by a victorious enemy. A stirring tale of brotherhood, coming-of-age, and survival, this novel evokes a time when Czechs, Slovaks, Austrians, and Germans fought on the same side while divided by language, ethnicity, and social class.

• 3 out of 5 stars

Interesting but somehow less than satisfying

• By Kathy on 03-13-13

Entry Lessons

• The Stories of Women Fighting for Their Place, Their Children, and Their Futures After Incarceration

By: Jorja Leap

• Narrated by: Sonia Kallen
• Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
• Overall 3.5 out of 5 stars 3
• Performance 3 out of 5 stars 3
• Story 3.5 out of 5 stars 3

Recent reports show that women make up the fastest-growing population within the United States’ criminal justice system. And yet, despite necessary conversations about incarceration and prison abolition, their stories of abuse, neglect, poverty, and family separation often go untold. Now, through immersive storytelling and expert analysis of women’s lives after prison, anthropologist Jorja Leap explores their journeys into, through, and beyond the jail cell.

• 5 out of 5 stars
• By Amazon Customer on 10-11-23

The Distance Between Us

By: Reyna Grande

• Narrated by: Yareli Arizmendi
• Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 731
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 622
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 620

In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling...unvarnished, resonant” ( BookPage ) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries.

opened my eyes to the beauty of our stories

• By Evelyn on 09-18-20

Rising out of Hatred

• The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist

By: Eli Saslow

• Narrated by: Scott Brick, Eli Saslow
• Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,593
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,397
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 1,393

Derek Black grew up at the epicenter of white nationalism. His father founded Stormfront, the largest racist community on the Internet. His godfather, David Duke, was a KKK Grand Wizard. By the time Derek turned 19, he had become an elected politician with his own daily radio show - already regarded as the "the leading light" of the burgeoning white nationalist movement. "We can infiltrate," Derek once told a crowd of white nationalists. "We can take the country back." Then he went to college.

Great book. Very relatable as a former racist southerner.

• By Derrick Murphy on 12-23-18

Illegally Yours

By: Rafael Agustin

• Narrated by: Rafael Agustin
• Length: 7 hrs and 38 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 130
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 106
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 107

Illegally Yours is a heartwarming, comical look at how this struggling Ecuadorian immigrant family bonded together to navigate Rafa's school life, his parents' work lives, and their shared secret life as undocumented Americans, determined to make the best of their always turbulent and sometimes dangerous American existence. An alternatingly hilarious and touching exploration of belonging and identity, Illegally Yours revolves around one very simple question: What does it mean to be American?

The sky is the limit

• By Lucia Merino on 01-01-23

By: Javier Zamora

• Narrated by: Javier Zamora
• Length: 17 hrs and 8 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 2,452
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 2,259
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 2,254

Javier Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.

MASTERPIECE of Poetic Prose, Outstanding Narration

• By Mary Burnight on 01-12-23

The Sun Does Shine

• Oprah's Book Club Summer 2018 Selection
• By: Anthony Ray Hinton, Lara Love Hardin, Bryan Stevenson - foreword
• Narrated by: Bryan Stevenson - foreword, Kevin R. Free
• Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 7,352
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 6,636
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 6,608

In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with an incompetent defense attorney and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in despairing silence.

DOWN WITH CAPITAL PUNISHMENT!!!

• By MUDDBONE on 04-29-18

By: Anthony Ray Hinton , and others

I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter

By: Erika L. Sánchez

• Narrated by: Kyla Garcia
• Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 6,327
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,484
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,486

Perfect Mexican daughters do not go away to college. And they do not move out of their parents' house after high school graduation. Perfect Mexican daughters never abandon their family. But Julia is not your perfect Mexican daughter. That was Olga's role. Then a tragic accident on the busiest street in Chicago leaves Olga dead and Julia left behind to reassemble the shattered pieces of her family. And no one seems to acknowledge that Julia is broken, too. Instead, her mother seems to channel her grief into pointing out every possible way Julia has failed.

FOR LATINAS WHO ARE OFTEN TOLD THEY "SOUND WHITE"

• By Alex on 12-14-18

Salvage the Bones

By: Jesmyn Ward

• Narrated by: January LaVoy
• Length: 9 hrs and 22 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 404
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 352
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 348

A hurricane is building, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard drinker, largely absent, he doesn't show concern for much else. Esch and her three brothers are stocking food, but there isn't much to save. Lately, Esch can't keep down what food she gets; she's 14 and pregnant. Her brother Skeetah is sneaking scraps for his prized pitbull's new litter, dying one by one in the dirt. Meanwhile, brothers Randall and Junior try to stake their claim in a family long on child's play and short on parenting.

Good but I wish I hadn't read it.

• By Jeanie on 01-26-21

Funny in Farsi

• A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

By: Firoozeh Dumas

• Narrated by: Firoozeh Dumas
• Length: 5 hrs and 40 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,086
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,654
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,654

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

The melting pot, next generation

• By Jerry on 02-15-08

Into the Wild

By: Jon Krakauer

• Narrated by: Philip Franklin
• Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 10,083
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,112
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,113

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself.

A Book that Never Left Me

• By Craig Mitchell on 08-07-07

A Dream Called Home

• Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 478
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 408
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 407

When Reyna Grande was nine years old, she walked across the US-Mexico border in search of a home, desperate to be reunited with the parents who had left her behind years before for a better life in the City of Angels. What she found instead was an indifferent mother, an abusive, alcoholic father, and a school system that belittled her heritage. With so few resources at her disposal, Reyna finds refuge in words, and it is her love of reading and writing that propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz.

• By Carolyn on 10-17-18

Hillbilly Elegy

• A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

By: J. D. Vance

• Narrated by: J. D. Vance
• Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 53,392
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 47,255
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 47,157

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

In Mamaw's Contradictions Lay Great Wisdom

• By Cynthia on 11-20-16

• Poverty and Profit in the American City

By: Matthew Desmond

• Narrated by: Dion Graham
• Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,927
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 5,257
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 5,240

In Evicted , Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” ( The Nation ), “vivid and unsettling” ( New York Review of Books ), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

Former Property Manager

• By Charla on 05-18-16

We Are Not from Here

By: Jenny Torres Sanchez

• Narrated by: Marisa Blake
• Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 200
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 169
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 168

Pulga has his dreams. Chico has his grief. Pequeña has her pride. And these three teens have one another. But none of them have illusions about the town they've grown up in. Even with the love of family, threats lurk around every corner. And when those threats become all too real, the trio knows they have no choice but to run: from their country, from their families, from their beloved home. Crossing from Guatemala through Mexico, they follow the route of La Bestia, the perilous train system that might deliver them to a better life - if they are lucky enough to survive the journey.

this book broke my heart and I love it.

• By Anonymous User on 03-29-22

Thirteen Reasons Why

By: Jay Asher

• Narrated by: Debra Wiseman, Joel Johnstone
• Length: 6 hrs and 24 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 8,353
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 7,359
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 7,375

Clay Jensen returns home from school to find a strange package with his name on it lying on his porch. Inside he discovers several cassette tapes recorded by Hannah Baker, his classmate and crush, who committed suicide two weeks earlier. Hannah's voice explains that there are 13 reasons she decided to end her life. Clay is one of them. If he listens, he'll find out why.

An Ideal Audio Book

• By Diana on 01-10-11

Nineteen Minutes

By: Jodi Picoult

• Narrated by: Carol Monda
• Length: 21 hrs and 4 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,526
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,064
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 4,054

Sterling is an ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens - until the day its complacency is shattered by an act of violence. Josie Cormier, the teenage daughter of the judge sitting on the case, should be the state's best witness, but she can't remember what happened before her very own eyes - or can she? As the trial progresses, fault lines between the high school and the adult community begin to show - destroying the closest of friendships and families.

Juvenile perspective

• By Karen Brow on 04-23-17

Publisher's summary

When Enrique is five years old, his mother, Lourdes, too poor to feed her children, leaves Honduras to work in the United States. The move allows her to send money back home to Enrique so he can eat better and go to school past the third grade.

Lourdes promises Enrique she will return quickly. But she struggles in America. Years pass. He begs for his mother to come back. Without her, he becomes lonely and troubled.

With gritty determination and a deep longing to be by his mother's side, Enrique travels through hostile, unknown worlds. Each step of the way through Mexico, he and other migrants, many of them children, are hunted like animals. Gangsters control the tops of the trains. Bandits rob and kill migrants up and down the tracks. Corrupt cops all along the route are out to fleece and deport them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, they must jump onto and off the moving boxcars they call El Tren de la Muerte - the Train of Death.

Enrique pushes forward using his wit, courage, and hope - and the kindness of strangers. It is an epic journey, one thousands of immigrant children make each year to find their mothers in the United States.

Based on the Los Angeles Times newspaper series that won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for feature writing and another for feature photography, Enrique's Journey is the timeless story of families torn apart, the yearning to be together again, and a boy who will risk his life to find the mother he loves.

• Unabridged Audiobook
• Categories: Biographies & Memoirs

Critic reviews

More from the same, la traversia de enrique.

• The Butterfly Mosque
• Princess Sultana's Circle
• The Children of Noisy Village

Related to this topic

The Girl Who Smiled Beads

• A Story of War and What Comes After
• By: Clemantine Wamariya, Elizabeth Weil
• Narrated by: Robin Miles
• Length: 9 hrs
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 634
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 540
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 538

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.

Narrator detracts from story

• By Laura on 01-16-19

By: Clemantine Wamariya , and others

Under the Same Sky

• From Starvation in North Korea to Salvation in America
• By: Joseph Kim, Stephan Talty
• Narrated by: Raymond Lee
• Length: 9 hrs and 26 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 155
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 140
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 140

A searing story of starvation and survival in North Korea, followed by a dramatic escape, rescue by activists and Christian missionaries, and success in the United States thanks to newfound faith and courage.

Tugs at the heart strings

• By R3v13w3r on 07-15-15

By: Joseph Kim , and others

Forgiveness

• A Gift from My Grandparents

By: Mark Sakamoto

• Narrated by: Geoff Sugiyama
• Length: 7 hrs and 41 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 39
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 33
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 32

When the Second World War broke out, Ralph MacLean chose to escape his troubled life on the Magdalen Islands in eastern Canada and volunteer to serve his country overseas. Meanwhile, in Vancouver, Mitsue Sakamoto saw her family and her stable community torn apart after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Admirable progenitors

• By M. D. Baines on 04-24-18

The House at Sugar Beach

By: Helene Cooper

• Narrated by: Helene Cooper
• Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 304
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 186
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 186

At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.

• 2 out of 5 stars

Can't recommend it

• By Taryn on 03-25-16

Something Fierce

• Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter

By: Carmen Aguirre

• Narrated by: Carmen Aguirre
• Length: 9 hrs and 30 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 33
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 28
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 27

Carmen Aguirre was six-year-old when she and her family fled to Canada following General Augusto Pinochet’s violent 1973 coup in Chile. She was only eleven-years-old when her mother and stepfather joined the resistance movement and returned to South America, taking Carmen and her sister went with them. As their mother and stepfather set up a safe house for resistance members in La Paz, Bolivia, the girls' own double lives began. At 18, Carmen became a militant herself, plunging further into a world of terror, paranoia and euphoria.

• 4 out of 5 stars

revolutionary read

• By David Brown on 04-05-18

The Lightless Sky

• A Twelve-Year-Old Refugee's Harrowing Escape from Afghanistan and His Extraordinary Journey Across Half the World

By: Gulwali Passarlay

• Narrated by: Assaf Cohen, Susan Duerden
• Length: 11 hrs and 43 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 48
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 42
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 43

In 2006, after his father was killed, Gulwali Passarlay was caught between the Taliban, who wanted to recruit him, and the Americans, who wanted to use him. To protect her son, Gulwali's mother sent him away. The search for safety would lead the 12-year-old across eight countries, from the mountains of Eastern Afghanistan through Iran and Europe to Britain. Over the course of 12 harrowing months, Gulwali endured imprisonment, hunger, cruelty, brutality, loneliness, and terror - and nearly drowned crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

A Face for Refugees

• By Daryl on 12-10-16

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places

• A Vietnamese Woman's Journey from War to Peace
• By: Le Ly Hayslip, Jay Wurts
• Narrated by: Nancy Kwan
• Length: 3 hrs and 3 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 101
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 80
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 82

This haunting memoir tells the brutal story of the Vietnam War from the perspective of an innocent victim whose childhood was dominated by violence, devastation, and conflicts between the teachings of her culture and the realities of war. The youngest in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was 12 years old when U.S. helicopters landed in her village. She was raped and "ruined" for marriage by Viet Cong soldiers, imprisoned and tortured by the South Vietnamese, and sentenced to death by the Viet Cong. Ultimately fleeing to the U.S. with her children, she finally found peace, and in 1986, she was reunited with her family in Vietnam. The story of her homecoming, interwoven with her memories of the war years, paints a vivid picture of a noble, optimistic woman and her native country.

Difficult to listen to

• By heatherhg on 07-01-07

By: Le Ly Hayslip , and others

Behind the Beautiful Forevers

• Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

By: Katherine Boo

• Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
• Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 2,268
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,955
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 1,956

In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. As India starts to prosper, the residents of Annawadi are electric with hope. Abdul, an enterprising teenager, sees “a fortune beyond counting” in the recyclable garbage that richer people throw away.

An Antidote for Shantaram

• By Dr. on 06-14-12

Stars Between the Sun and Moon

• One Woman's Life in North Korea and Escape to Freedom
• By: Lucia Jang, Susan McClelland
• Narrated by: Janet Song
• Length: 7 hrs and 39 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 208
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 193
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 193

Born in 1970s North Korea, Lucia Jang grew up in a typical household - her parents worked in the factories, and the family scraped by on rations. Nightly she bowed to her photo of Kim Il-Sung. It was the beginning of a chaotic period with a decade-long famine. Jang married an abusive man who sold their baby. She left him and went home to help her family by illegally crossing the river to China to trade goods. She was caught and imprisoned twice.

Fantastic story. Well read.

• By Jfm on 02-20-16

By: Lucia Jang , and others

In the Country

By: Mia Alvar

• Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
• Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 58
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 53
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 55

These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.

My introduction to Filipino literature and culture

• By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16

Things We Lost in the Fire

By: Mariana Enriquez

• Narrated by: Tanya Eby
• Length: 5 hrs and 46 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 130
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 109
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 110

An arresting collection of short stories, reminiscent of Shirley Jackson and Julio Cortazar, by an exciting new international talent.

Great short story collection

• By Gatster on 06-15-17

Hour of the Hunter

By: J. A. Jance

• Narrated by: Gene Engene
• Length: 14 hrs and 46 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 235
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 187

A brutal, psychopathic murderer is released from prison - and stalks his prey with intent to kill.

• By Marion Burke on 03-01-08

Maya's Notebook

By: Isabel Allende

• Narrated by: Maria Cabezas
• Length: 14 hrs and 35 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 411
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 360
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 362

Neglected by her parents, 19-year-old Maya Nidal has grown up in Berkeley with her grandparents. Her grandmother Nini is a force of nature, a woman whose formidable strength helped her build a new life after emigrating from Chile in 1973. Popo, Maya's grandfather, is a gentle man whose solid, comforting presence helps calm the turbulence of Maya's adolescence. When Popo dies of cancer, Maya goes completely off the rails, turning to drugs, alcohol, and petty crime in a downward spiral that eventually bottoms out in Las Vegas.

Narrator ruins this book

• By R.J. Mulder on 05-13-14

The Boy Kings of Texas

By: Domingo Martinez

• Narrated by: Emilio Delgado
• Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 356
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 324
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 323

A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.

It was Okay

• By DebKoo on 05-17-13

Born Bright

• A Young Girl's Journey from Nothing to Something in America

By: C. Nicole Mason

• Narrated by: Robin Eller
• Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 67
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 59
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 59

Born Bright , C. Nicole Mason's powerful memoir, is a story of reconciliation, constrained choices, and life on the other side of the tracks. Born in the 1970s in Los Angeles, California, Mason was raised by a beautiful but volatile 16-year-old single mother. Early on, she learned to navigate between an unpredictable home life and school, where she excelled. By high school, Mason was seamlessly straddling two worlds.

• By Daryl on 11-06-16

Apocalypse Child

• A Life in End Times - a Memoir

By: Flor Edwards

• Narrated by: Flor Edwards
• Length: 6 hrs and 42 mins
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars 41
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 40

For the first 13 years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be 13 years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her.

A truly unique background and story

• By Asaph on 04-13-18

By: George Hodgman

• Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
• Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
• Overall 4 out of 5 stars 368
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 329
• Story 4 out of 5 stars 329

When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...

Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George

• By Sara on 10-08-15

They Said They Wanted Revolution

• A Memoir of My Parents

By: Neda Toloui-Semnani

• Narrated by: Neda Toloui-Semnani
• Length: 8 hrs and 6 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 27
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 25
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 25

In 1979, Neda Toloui-Semnani’s parents left the United States for Iran to join the revolution. But the promise of those early heady days in Tehran was warped by the rise of the Islamic Republic. With the new regime came international isolation, cultural devastation, and profound personal loss for Neda. Her father was arrested and her mother was forced to make a desperate escape, pregnant and with Neda in tow.

I learned so much. Great pacing, felt like I time-traveled

• By Jess Fuchs on 02-07-22

People who viewed this also viewed...

• Narrated by: Adriana Sananes
• Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 54
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 40
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 44

La travesía de Enrique cuenta de un niño abandonado por su madre que se marcha a los Estados Unidos en busca de una mejor calidad de vida. Sonia Nazaro, galardonada con el Premio Pulitzer por esta historia real, nos presenta la realidad que viven los inmigrantes en su peregrinar para lograr el sueño americano.La historia comienza en Honduras y narra el viaje de Enrique en búsqueda de su madre a los Estados Unidos, sin dinero y sin ningún otro recurso que su fe en encontrarla.

increíble e imprescindible narrativa humana

• By Emily on 01-03-11

The Devil's Highway

• A True Story

By: Luis Alberto Urrea

• Narrated by: Luis Alberto Urrea
• Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,365
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,212
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,210

In May 2001, a group of men attempted to cross the Mexican border into the desert of southern Arizona, through the deadliest region of the continent, the "Devil's Highway." Three years later, Luis Alberto Urrea wrote about what happened to them. The result was a national bestseller, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a "book of the year" in multiple newspapers, and a work proclaimed as a modern American classic.

My Favorite Author to Listen to

• By C. F. Eastman on 03-08-18

The Latehomecomer

• A Hmong Family Memoir

By: Kao Kalia Yang

• Narrated by: Kao Kalia Yang
• Length: 9 hrs and 23 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 273
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 239
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 236

In the 70s and 80s, thousands of Hmong families made the journey from the war-torn jungles of Laos to the overcrowded refugee camps of Thailand and onward to the United States, all in search of a new place to call home. Decades later, their experiences remain largely unknown. Kao Kalia Yang was driven to tell her own family's story after her grandmother’s death. The Latehomecomer is a tribute to that grandmother, a remarkable woman whose spirit held her family together.

Great Hmong history, lousy literature

• By Isadore Ducasse on 10-12-18

• Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
• By: Oscar Martinez, Francisco Goldman - introduction, Daniela Maria Ugaz - translator, and others
• Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
• Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 69
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 58
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 57

One day a few years ago, 300 migrants were kidnapped between the remote desert towns of Altar, Mexico, and Sasabe, Arizona. A local priest got 120 released, many with broken ankles and other marks of abuse, but the rest vanished. Óscar Martinez, a young writer from El Salvador, was in Altar soon after the abduction, and his account of the migrant disappearances is only one of the harrowing stories he garnered from two years spent traveling up and down the migrant trail from Central America and across the US border.

Phony accents

• By Gina on 05-17-22

By: Oscar Martinez , and others

Orphan Train

By: Christina Baker Kline

• Narrated by: Jessica Almasy, Suzanne Toren
• Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 27,227
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 24,166
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 24,155

Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer is close to "aging out" out of the foster care system. A community-service position helping an elderly woman clean out her home is the only thing keeping Molly out of juvie and worse.... As she helps Vivian sort through her possessions and memories, Molly learns that she and Vivian aren’t as different as they seem to be. A young Irish immigrant orphaned in New York City, Vivian was put on a train to the Midwest with hundreds of other children whose destinies would be determined by luck and chance.

Moving story of sharing and transformation.

• By Kathi on 04-03-13

By: Elizabeth Acevedo

• Narrated by: Elizabeth Acevedo
• Length: 3 hrs and 30 mins
• Overall 5 out of 5 stars 3,608
• Performance 5 out of 5 stars 3,173
• Story 5 out of 5 stars 3,155

Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking. But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers - especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, whom her family can never know about.

• By KSS on 01-09-19

• From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

By: Cheryl Strayed

• Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
• Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 24,850
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 21,643
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 21,687

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Glad I Took the Trip

• By FanB14 on 04-08-13

By: Alan Gratz

• Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom, Kyla Garcia, Assaf Cohen
• Length: 7 hrs and 37 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,453
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,064
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 2,058

This timely and powerful novel tells the story of three different children seeking refuge. Josef is a Jewish boy living in 1930s Nazi Germany. With the threat of concentration camps looming, he and his family board a ship bound for the other side of the world. Isabel is a Cuban girl in 1994. With riots and unrest plaguing her country, she and her family set out on a raft, hoping to find safety in America. Mahmoud is a Syrian boy in 2015. With his homeland torn apart by violence and destruction, he and his family begin a long trek toward Europe.

Intended for 5-8th graders, but it is good for adults too

• By LJK on 12-21-17

Crying in H Mart

By: Michelle Zauner

• Narrated by: Michelle Zauner
• Length: 7 hrs and 23 mins
• Overall 4.5 out of 5 stars 11,392
• Performance 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,872
• Story 4.5 out of 5 stars 9,841

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian-American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

Broken Korean

• By Tim on 04-21-21

What listeners say about Enrique's Journey

• 4 out of 5 stars 4.2 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 371
• 4 Stars 208
• 4 out of 5 stars 4.1 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 283
• 4 Stars 149
• 4.5 out of 5 stars 4.4 out of 5.0
• 5 Stars 365
• 4 Stars 132

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Audible.com reviews, amazon reviews.

• Overall 5 out of 5 stars
• Performance 4 out of 5 stars
• Story 5 out of 5 stars

• Anonymous User

Important and intriguing read.

Loved it. Listened in the car daily and was impressed with each new chapter. A must read for educators.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

• Overall 4 out of 5 stars
• Performance 3 out of 5 stars

Enlightening

The narrator DESTROYED the Spanish. I’m certain there must have been someone else who could have read this, but it was an interesting listen nonetheless.

Great and insightful story

Loved the story, but narration was so, so would have like to had a person that could pronounce the Spanish words better.

3 people found this helpful

• Overall 3 out of 5 stars
• Performance 1 out of 5 stars
• Story 4 out of 5 stars

• Amazon Customer

Good story but difficult to finish

I struggled to finish because of the narrator's accent. Should have someone who could properly pronounce spanish words

2 people found this helpful

• Performance 5 out of 5 stars

Required reading turned into unstoppable tears

I was required to read this book for school and I always dread those assignments because I love to read on my time. But once I dove into this story there was no pulling me out. It was addicting, heartbreaking, raw, and all around heart warming. Very good, props to my college for assigning it ; )

• Debbie Ocean

Couldn't stop listening. Narrator should have been a spanish speaking person. Real eye opener as to the plight of the illegal immigrant.

A Different Perspective

This book offers wonderful perspective into the complicated world of immigration and what it entails.

• Teaching Aloha

This is a MUST READ

For anyone who has ever thought about the topic of immigration. An unbelievable true story.

• Regular person

Great story

The reader is good, but her Spanish accent is terrible. Should have used a native speaker or at least a person who is fluent. The reader clearly has no familiarity with the language. The few words and phrases she pronounces are cringeworthy.

• Performance 2 out of 5 stars

Excellent reporting; reader butchers Spanish

Nazario's reporting is excellent. She's taken a heart wrenching situation and woven in humanity to make it bearable. Byers is a good reader for English but her Spanish takes away from her performance.

5 people found this helpful

Please sign in to report this content

You'll still be able to report anonymously.

• Description
• Don Francisco Presenta
• Update on the Family
• María Isabel
• Young Adult Version
• Spanish Version
• Spanish Language Reviews
• Praise for Enrique’s Journey
• Reviews of Enrique’s Journey
• Articles about Author
• Articles by Author
• TV Interviews
• Radio Interviews
• Speech Videos
• Upcoming Events
• Past Events
• Speech Topics
• High School
• Middle School
• Enrique’s Journey Common Reads
• Counseling Guides
• How to Help Immigrant Students
• Work By & For Students
• Recommended Movies & Documentaries
• Journalism Instruction
• Interview with Facing History and Ourselves
• Questions for Discussion
• Media Coverage: Children and the Journey North
• Art Inspired by the Book
• Theatrical Play
• Photos of People Who Help
• Photos of Injured Migrants
• Get Involved
• Refugees at our Door
• Kids in Need of Defense [KIND]
• Hope for Honduras
• Esperanza para Honduras

Enrique’s Journey recounts the unforgettable quest of a Honduran boy looking for his mother, eleven years after she is forced to leave her starving family to find work in the United States. Braving unimaginable peril, often clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains, Enrique travels through hostile worlds full of thugs, bandits, and corrupt cops. But he pushes forward, relying on his wit, courage, hope, and the kindness of strangers. As Isabel Allende writes: “This is a twenty-first-century Odyssey. If you are going to read only one nonfiction book this year, it has to be this one.” Now updated with a new Epilogue and Afterword, photos of Enrique and his family, an author interview and more, this is a classic of contemporary America.

National Bestseller

Named one of the best books of the year by the  washington post ,  san francisco chronicle ,  miami herald , and  san antonio express-news., named the best non-fiction book of 2014 by  the latino author ., among the most chosen books as a  freshman or common read:  nearly 100 universities, more than 20 cities and scores of high schools nationwide have adopted  enrique’s journey  as a their freshman or common read. middle schools are now using a version adapted for young readers as their common read., published in august 2013: a new version of  enrique’s journey   adapted for young readers  for the 7 th  grade on up and for reluctant readers in high school and geared to new common core standards in schools. the young adult version was published in spanish in july 2015. new york city has made the ya edition part of its classroom curriculum., published in february 2014: a  revised and updated   enrique’s journey , with a new epilogue and photos., published in eight languages., recent updates.

“What Part of Illegal Don’t You Understand?” My Family’s Refugee Story Shows We Can Have an Immigration Policy that is Both Sane and Humane

My Family’s Refugee…

IT’S MONDAY: TIME…

Enrique's Journey

The true story of a boy determined to reunite with his mother, by sonia nazario.

Adapted for young people, this edition of Enrique's Journey is written by Sonia Nazario and based on the adult book of the same name. It is the true story of Enrique, a teenager from Honduras, who sets out on a journey, braving hardship and peril, to find his mother, who had no choice but to leave him when he was a child and go to the United States in search of work. Enrique's story will bring to light the daily struggles of migrants, legal and otherwise, and the complicated choices they face simply trying to survive and provide for the basic needs of their families. The issues seamlessly interwoven into this gripping nonfiction work for young people are perfect for common core discussion. Includes an 8-page photo insert, as well as an epilogue that describes what has happened to Enrique and his family since the adult edition was published.   "A heartwrenching account. Provides a human face, both beautiful and scarred, for the undocumented. A must read."-- Kirkus Reviews , Starred "Nazario's straightforward . . . journalistic writing style largely serves the complex, sprawling story effectively. A valuable addition to young adult collections."-- School Library Journal   "This powerfully written survival story personalizes the complicated, pervasive, and heart-wrenching debates about immigration and immigrants' rights and will certainly spark discussion in the classroom and at home."-- Booklist An NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People   A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of the Year A Junior Library Guild Selection

Available format(s):

VOICEText (H)

Log in to read

What's an Audio Format Audio format refers to the way an audiobook is recorded. Not all audiobooks have the same formats. Classic Audio: A human reading an audiobook without the text displayed. VOICEtext (H): Human narrator with text that you can follow along with as it reads. VOICEtext (S): Synthetic voice with text you can follow along with as it reads.

This book is only partially available. Why?

Book Information

Add to bookshelf.

Approval Needed

Approval requested.

• Find a Library
• Browse Collections
• Enrique's Journey

ebook ∣ The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with His Mother

By sonia nazario.

Add Book To Favorites

Is this your library?

Sign up to save your library.

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

9780812971781

Sonia Nazario

Random House Publishing Group

02 January 2007

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:.

Sonia Nazario – Enrique’s Journey Audiobook

I discovered a lot from this publication. I had a difficult time reviewing it at first, yet ended up being extremely interested from the sociological viewpoint when the author explained how the youngsters that had taken the train, and their mommies really felt regarding each other after years of separation. I was additionally curious about the meetings at the end with Enrique, and with the author, Sonia Nazario. I got a mental picture of immigration in our country which is every bit as profound a migration as is taking place in Europe with the war in Syria bringing extra immigrants than they can handle. The migration to our country is also similar in numbers seeking asylum. I wish that we can invite our natural immigrants as people who will improve our culture, rather than hinder it. Californians have approved and also absorbed immigrants much better as well as much longer than numerous various other states. It can be done.I discovered “Enrique’s Journey” to be one of those books that is tough to put down. It is quite possibly composed, thorough, as well as tells the story as though the reader sees greater than one person’s perspective. As an example, when Lourdes initially clarified her reasoning for leaving her children behind (extreme poverty etc), it made good sense although that many mommies right here might not think of needing to make such an option. Enrique’s Journey Audiobook Free. For young Enrique, however, all the destitution was challenging indeed, yet losing his mommy throughout his childhood was a loss that he really did not see as “worth it” as well as it created psychological scars that are likely long-term. I have actually never been one that protested immigrants– although I did really feel that they ought to simply undergo the process legally! It is not that uncomplicated it turns out. The nations placed lots of barriers in the method to accomplishing a lawful as well as secure immigration process– several of those obstacles permanently factors, and also some only bolster the bias versus those who might look, talk as well as act differently than we do below in the United States. Sonia Nazario is an excellent journalist as well as writer because she clarifies the obstacles she had in addition to any “shortcuts” she needed to take to function about or via them. As an example, she did not take EVERY step of the treacherous trip with Enrique, nevertheless she was able to collaborate with him to recreate the trip in their conversation, with corroboration, etc. I never prior to recognized just exactly how treacherous and at times fatal such a journey could be until reading this publication! I very advise it!This book is an outstanding check out what Mexican, Central American, as well as South American immigrants to the United States go through: their living conditions in their own nations, the battles and also tragedies they sustain ahead to a better way of living, and the proceeding battles once they reach our country. It definitely made me a lot more aware of the whole scenario. I am passing it on to my child. She is considering utilizing it for a publication club read.I can not write enough advantages concerning this book. This publication is one more example of my sentence that just skilled journalists ought to be permitted to compose and release publications. Like William Rempel’s book At the Evil one’s Table, Sonia Nazario’s great book has actually pulled together a myriad of relevant information and important truths in order to provide a flawless efficiency informing the tale of not only Enrique yet the hundreds of various other children that leave Central American nations each year starting the unsafe trip that takes them though Mexico searching for their parents that entrusted to begin a much better life in the United States. I am not an especially quick visitor, yet the unfavorable trouble with publications like this is that they are so engaging, gripping, and also well-written that you can not place them down, blowing via the whole publication till you no longer have a good book to check out. The writer covers the topic comprehensive and breadth and also suggests some options, although I suspect these are unbending troubles that will always be with us.Excellent publication about a 12 year old boy from Honduras that sets out on his very own to discover his mother in the U.S . It is a real tale, written by a journalist, who interviewed him as well as went to all the areas along the way. Sonia Nazario – Enrique’s Journey Audio Book Online. His plight in going across Honduras, Guatemala and also Mexico and all the suffering, hunger, beatings, assaults that he experienced along the way left me without words and offered me a better understanding of what the immigrants trying to go across into the U.S. go through.

Stephenie Meyer – New Moon Audiobook

Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Audiobook

C. S. Lewis – The Horse and His Boy Audiobook

Pittacus Lore – I Am Number Four Audiobook

Sarah J. Maas – A Court of Thorns and Roses Audiobook

Barack Obama – Dreams from My Father Audiobook

S. E. Hinton – That Was Then, This Is Now Audiobook

Frank Peretti – This Present Darkness Audiobook

We will keep fighting for all libraries - stand with us!

Internet Archive Audio

• This Just In
• Grateful Dead
• Old Time Radio
• 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings
• Audio Books & Poetry
• Computers, Technology and Science
• Music, Arts & Culture
• News & Public Affairs
• Spirituality & Religion
• Radio News Archive

• Flickr Commons
• Occupy Wall Street Flickr
• NASA Images
• Solar System Collection
• Ames Research Center

• All Software
• Old School Emulation
• MS-DOS Games
• Historical Software
• Classic PC Games
• Software Library
• Kodi Archive and Support File
• Vintage Software
• CD-ROM Software
• CD-ROM Software Library
• Software Sites
• Tucows Software Library
• Shareware CD-ROMs
• Software Capsules Compilation
• CD-ROM Images
• ZX Spectrum
• DOOM Level CD

• Smithsonian Libraries
• FEDLINK (US)
• Lincoln Collection
• American Libraries
• Canadian Libraries
• Universal Library
• Project Gutenberg
• Children's Library
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• Books by Language
• Additional Collections

• Prelinger Archives
• Democracy Now!
• Occupy Wall Street
• TV NSA Clip Library
• Animation & Cartoons
• Arts & Music
• Computers & Technology
• Cultural & Academic Films
• Ephemeral Films
• Sports Videos
• Videogame Videos
• Youth Media

Search the history of over 866 billion web pages on the Internet.

Mobile Apps

• Wayback Machine (iOS)
• Wayback Machine (Android)

Browser Extensions

Archive-it subscription.

• Explore the Collections
• Build Collections

Save Page Now

Capture a web page as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.

Please enter a valid web address

• Donate Donate icon An illustration of a heart shape

Enrique's journey

Bookreader item preview, share or embed this item, flag this item for.

• Graphic Violence
• Explicit Sexual Content
• Hate Speech
• Misinformation/Disinformation
• Marketing/Phishing/Advertising
• Misleading/Inaccurate/Missing Metadata

Obscured text on back cover due to sticker attached.

plus-circle Add Review comment Reviews

Better World Books

DOWNLOAD OPTIONS

No suitable files to display here.

IN COLLECTIONS

Uploaded by station04.cebu on September 24, 2022

SIMILAR ITEMS (based on metadata)

Advertisement

Revisiting 'Enrique's Journey'

Copy the code below to embed the wbur audio player on your site.

<iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://player.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/03/25/revisiting-enriques-journey"></iframe>

Sonia Nazario first introduced the world to Enrique through a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles for the Los Angeles Times and then in the acclaimed 2006 book " Enrique's Journey ."

Enrique was a teenager from Honduras who was determined to come to the United States to find his mother, who left when he was five.

Despite being caught numerous times and despite the perils of the journey, Enrique persisted: riding on top of rail cars through Mexico, enduring beatings and once, almost being thrown off the train.

He finally reunited with his mother, but their relationship was a difficult one.

Now, Nazario has released a new version of the book, updating us on what has happened to Enrique, as well as the growing numbers of children who continue to make the dangerous railway journey.

• Kids in Need of Defense , a nonprofit providing legal assistance to undocumented children. Nazario is a board member.

Book Excerpt: 'Enrique's Journey'

By Sonia Nazario

His mother is not talking to him. She will not even look at him. Enrique has no hint of what she is going to do.

Lourdes knows. She understands, as only a mother can, the terror she is about to inflict, the ache Enrique will feel, and finally the emptiness.

What will become of him? Already he will not let anyone else feed or bathe him. He loves her deeply, as only a son can. With Lourdes, he is openly affectionate. “Dame pico, mami. Give me a kiss, Mom,” he pleads, over and over, pursing his lips. With Lourdes, he is a chatterbox. “Mira, mami. Look, Mom,” he says softly, asking her questions about everything he sees. Without her, he is so shy it is crushing.

Slowly, she walks out onto the porch. Enrique clings to her pant leg. Beside her, he is tiny. Lourdes loves him so much she cannot bring herself to say a word. She cannot carry his picture. It would melt her resolve. She cannot hug him. He is five years old.

They live on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa, in Honduras. She can barely afford food for him and his sister, Belky, who is seven. She’s never been able to buy them a toy or a birthday cake. Lourdes, twenty–four, scrubs other people’s laundry in a muddy river. She goes door to door, selling tortillas, used clothes, and plantains.

She fills a wooden box with gum and crackers and cigarettes, and she finds a spot where she can squat on a dusty sidewalk next to the downtown Pizza Hut and sell the items to passersby. The sidewalk is Enrique’s playground.

They have a bleak future. He and Belky are not likely to finish grade school. Lourdes cannot afford uniforms or pencils. Her husband is gone. A good job is out of the question.

Lourdes knows of only one place that offers hope. As a seven–year–old child, delivering tortillas her mother made to wealthy homes, she glimpsed this place on other people’s television screens. The flickering images were a far cry from Lourdes’s childhood home: a two–room shack made of wooden slats, its flimsy tin roof weighted down with rocks, the only bathroom a clump of bushes outside. On television, she saw New York City’s spectacular skyline, Las Vegas’s shimmering lights, Disneyland’s magic castle.

Lourdes has decided: She will leave. She will go to the United States and make money and send it home. She will be gone for one year—less, with luck—or she will bring her children to be with her. It is for them she is leaving, she tells herself, but still she feels guilty.

She kneels and kisses Belky and hugs her tightly. Then she turns to her own sister. If she watches over Belky, she will get a set of gold fingernails from el Norte.

But Lourdes cannot face Enrique. He will remember only one thing that she says to him: “Don’t forget to go to church this afternoon.” It is January 29, 1989. His mother steps off the porch. She walks away. “¿Dónde está mi mami?” Enrique cries, over and over. “Where is my mom?”

His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique’s fate. As a teenager—indeed, still a child—he will set out for the United States on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two-thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families. Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75 percent are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers’ arms.

The journey is hard for the Mexicans but harder still for Enrique and the others from Central America. They must make an illegal and dangerous trek up the length of Mexico. Counselors and immigration lawyers say only half of them get help from smugglers. The rest travel alone. They are cold, hungry, and helpless. They are hunted like animals by corrupt police, bandits, and gang members deported from the United States. A University of Houston study found that most are robbed, beaten, or raped, usually several times. Some are killed.

They set out with little or no money. Thousands, shelter workers say, make their way through Mexico clinging to the sides and tops of freight trains. Since the 1990s, Mexico and the United States have tried to thwart them. To evade Mexican police and immigration authorities, the children jump onto and off of the moving train cars. Sometimes they fall, and the wheels tear them apart.

They navigate by word of mouth or by the arc of the sun. Often, they don’t know where or when they’ll get their next meal. Some go days without eating. If a train stops even briefly, they crouch by the tracks, cup their hands, and steal sips of water from shiny puddles tainted with diesel fuel. At night, they huddle together on the train cars or next to the tracks. They sleep in trees, in tall grass, or in beds made of leaves.

Some are very young. Mexican rail workers have encountered seven–year–olds on their way to find their mothers. A policeman discovered a nine–year–old boy near the downtown Los Angeles tracks. “I’m looking for my mother,” he said. The youngster had left Puerto Cortes in Honduras three months before. He had been guided only by his cunning and the single thing he knew about her: where she lived. He had asked everyone, “How do I get to San Francisco?”

Typically, the children are teenagers. Some were babies when their mothers left; they know them only by pictures sent home. Others, a bit older, struggle to hold on to memories: One has slept in her mother’s bed; another has smelled her perfume, put on her deodorant, her clothes. One is old enough to remember his mother’s face, another her laugh, her favorite shade of lipstick, how her dress felt as she stood at the stove patting tortillas.

Many, including Enrique, begin to idealize their mothers. They remember how their mothers fed and bathed them, how they walked them to kindergarten. In their absence, these mothers become larger than life. Although in the United States the women struggle to pay rent and eat, in the imaginations of their children back home they become deliverance itself, the answer to every problem. Finding them becomes the quest for the Holy Grail.

Enrique is bewildered. Who will take care of him now that his mother is gone? Lourdes, unable to burden her family with both of her children, has split them up. Belky stayed with Lourdes’s mother and sisters. For two years, Enrique is entrusted to his father, Luis, from whom his mother has been separated for three years.

Enrique clings to his daddy, who dotes on him. A bricklayer, his father takes Enrique to work and lets him help mix mortar. They live with Enrique’s grandmother. His father shares a bed with him and brings him apples and clothes. Every month, Enrique misses his mother less, but he does not forget her. “When is she coming for me?” he asks.

Lourdes and her smuggler cross Mexico on buses. Each afternoon, she closes her eyes. She imagines herself home at dusk, playing with Enrique under a eucalyptus tree in her mother’s front yard. Enrique straddles a broom, pretending it’s a donkey, trotting around the muddy yard. Each afternoon, she presses her eyes shut and tears fall. Each afternoon, she reminds herself that if she is weak, if she does not keep moving forward, her children will pay.

Lourdes crosses into the United States in one of the largest immigrant waves in the country’s history. She enters at night through a rat–infested Tijuana sewage tunnel and makes her way to Los Angeles. There, in the downtown Greyhound bus terminal, the smuggler tells Lourdes to wait while he runs a quick errand. He’ll be right back. The smuggler has been paid to take her all the way to Miami.

Three days pass. Lourdes musses her filthy hair, trying to blend in with the homeless and not get singled out by police. She prays to God to put someone before her, to show her the way. Whom can she reach out to for help? Starved, she starts walking. East of downtown, Lourdes spots a small factory. On the loading dock, under a gray tin roof, women sort red and green tomatoes. She begs for work. As she puts tomatoes into boxes, she hallucinates that she is slicing open a juicy one and sprinkling it with salt. The boss pays her $14 for two hours’ work. Lourdes’s brother has a friend in Los Angeles who helps Lourdes get a fake Social Security card and a job.

She moves in with a Beverly Hills couple to take care of their three–year–old daughter. Their spacious home has carpet on the floors and mahogany panels on the walls. Her employers are kind. They pay her $125 a week. She gets nights and weekends off. Maybe, Lourdes tells herself—if she stays long enough—they will help her become legal.

Every morning as the couple leave for work, the little girl cries for her mother. Lourdes feeds her breakfast and thinks of Enrique and Belky. She asks herself: “Do my children cry like this? I’m giving this girl food instead of feeding my own children.” To get the girl to eat, Lourdes pretends the spoon is an airplane. But each time the spoon lands in the girl’s mouth, Lourdes is filled with sadness.

In the afternoon, after the girl comes home from prekindergarten class, they thumb through picture books and play. The girl, so close to Enrique’s age, is a constant reminder of her son. Many afternoons, Lourdes cannot contain her grief. She gives the girl a toy and dashes into the kitchen. There, out of sight, tears flow. After seven months, she cannot take it. She quits and moves to a friend’s place in Long Beach.

Boxes arrive in Tegucigalpa bearing clothes, shoes, toy cars, a RoboCop doll, a television. Lourdes writes: Do they like the things she is sending? She tells Enrique to behave, to study hard. She has hopes for him: graduation from high school, a white–collar job, maybe as an engineer. She pictures her son working in a crisp shirt and shiny shoes. She says she loves him.

Enrique asks about his mother. “She’ll be home soon,” his grandmother assures him. “Don’t worry. She’ll be back.”

But his mother does not come. Her disappearance is incomprehensible. Enrique’s bewilderment turns to confusion and then to adolescent anger.

When Enrique is seven, his father brings a woman home. To her, Enrique is an economic burden. One morning, she spills hot cocoa and burns him. His father throws her out. But their separation is brief.

“Mom,” Enrique’s father tells the grandmother, “I can’t think of anyone but that woman.” Enrique’s father bathes, dresses, splashes on cologne, and follows her. Enrique tags along and begs to stay with him. But his father tells him to go back to his grandmother.

His father begins a new family. Enrique sees him rarely, usually by chance. In time, Enrique’s love turns to contempt. “He -doesn’t love me. He loves the children he has with his wife,” he tells Belky. “I don’t have a dad.”

His father notices. “He looks at me as if he -wasn’t my son, as if he wants to strangle me,” he tells Enrique’s grandmother. Most of the blame, his father decides, belongs to Enrique’s mother. “She is the one who promised to come back.”

For Belky, their mother’s disappearance is just as distressing. She lives with Aunt Rosa Amalia, one of her mother’s sisters. On Mother’s Day, Belky struggles through a celebration at school. That night she cries quietly, alone in her room. Then she scolds herself. She should thank her mother for leaving; without the money she sends for books and uniforms, Belky could not even attend school. She reminds herself of all the other things her mother ships south: Reebok tennis shoes, black sandals, the yellow bear and pink puppy stuffed toys on her bed. She commiserates with a friend whose mother has also left. They console each other. They know a girl whose mother died of a heart attack. At least, they say, ours are alive. But Rosa Amalia thinks the separation has caused deep emotional problems. To her, it seems that Belky is struggling with an unavoidable question: How can I be worth anything if my mother left me?

“There are days,” Belky tells Aunt Rosa Amalia, “when I wake up and feel so alone.” Belky is temperamental. Sometimes she stops talking to everyone. When her mood turns dark, her grandmother warns the other children in the house, “¡Pórtense bien porque la marea anda brava! You better behave, because the seas are choppy!”

Confused by his mother’s absence, Enrique turns to his grandmother. Alone now, he and his father’s elderly mother share a shack thirty feet square. María Marcos built it herself of wooden slats. Enrique can see daylight in the cracks. It has four rooms, three without electricity. There is no running water. Gutters carry rain off the patched tin roof into two barrels. A trickle of cloudy white sewage runs past the front gate. On a well–worn rock nearby, Enrique’s grandmother washes musty used clothing she sells door to door. Next to the rock is the -latrine—a concrete hole. Beside it are buckets for bathing.

The shack is in Carrizal, one of Tegucigalpa’s poorest neighborhoods. Sometimes Enrique looks across the rolling hills to the neighborhood where he and his mother lived and where Belky still lives with their mother’s family. They are six miles apart. They hardly ever visit.

Lourdes sends Enrique $50 a month, occasionally $100, sometimes nothing. It is enough for food but not for school clothes, fees, notebooks, or pencils, which are expensive in Honduras. There is never enough for a birthday present. But Grandmother María hugs him and wishes him a cheery ¡Feliz cumpleaños!“Your mom can’t send enough,” she says, “so we both have to work.”

Enrique loves to climb his grandmother’s guayaba tree, but there is no more time for play now. After school, Enrique sells tamales and plastic bags of fruit juice from a bucket hung in the crook of his arm. “¡Tamarindo! ¡Piña!” he shouts.

Sometimes Enrique takes his wares to a service station where diesel–belching buses rumble into Carrizal. Jostling among mango and avocado vendors, he sells cups of diced fruit.

After he turns ten, he rides buses alone to an outdoor food market. He stuffs tiny bags with nutmeg, curry powder, and paprika, then seals them with hot wax. He pauses at big black gates in front of the market and calls out, “¿Va a querer especias? Who wants spices?” He has no vendor’s license, so he keeps moving, darting between wooden carts piled with papayas.

Younger children, five and six years old, dot the curbs, thrusting fistfuls of tomatoes and chiles at shoppers. Others offer to carry purchases of fruits and vegetables from stall to stall in rustic wooden wheelbarrows in exchange for tips. “Te ayudo? May I help you?” they ask. Arms taut, backs stooped, the boys heave forward, their carts bulging. In between sales, some of the young market workers sniff glue.

Grandmother María cooks plantains, spaghetti, and fresh eggs. Now and then, she kills a chicken and prepares it for him. In return, when she is sick, Enrique rubs medicine on her back. He brings water to her in bed. Two or three times a week, Enrique lugs buckets filled with drinking water, one on each shoulder, from the water truck at the bottom of the hill up to his grandmother’s house.

Every year on Mother’s Day, he makes a heart–shaped card at school and presses it into her hand. “I love you very much, Grandma,” he writes.

But she is not his mother. Enrique longs to hear Lourdes’s voice. Once he tries to call her collect from a public telephone in his neighborhood. He can’t get the call to go through. His only way of talking to her is at the home of his mother’s cousin María Edelmira Sánchez Mejía, one of the few family members who has a telephone. His mother seldom calls. One year she does not call at all.

“I thought you had died, girl!” María Edelmira says, when she finally does call. Better to send money, Lourdes replies, than burn it up on the phone. But there is another reason she hasn’t called: her life in the United States is nothing like the television images she saw in Honduras.

Lourdes shares an apartment bedroom with three other women. She sleeps on the floor. A boyfriend from Honduras, Santos, joins her in Long Beach. Lourdes is hopeful. She’s noticed that her good friend Alma saves much faster now that she has moved in with a Mexican boyfriend. The boyfriend pays Alma’s rent and bills. Alma can shop for her two girls in Honduras at nice stores such as JCPenney and Sears. She’s saving to build a house in Honduras.

Santos, who once worked with Lourdes’s stepfather as a bricklayer, is such a speedy worker that in Honduras his nickname was El Veloz. With Santos here, Lourdes tells herself, she will save enough to bring her children within two years. If not, she will take her savings and return to Honduras to build a little house and corner grocery store.

Lourdes unintentionally gets pregnant. She struggles through the difficult pregnancy, working in a refrigerated fish factory, packing and weighing salmon and catfish all day. Her water breaks at five one summer morning. Lourdes’s boyfriend, who likes to get drunk, goes to a bar to celebrate. He asks a female bar buddy to take Lourdes to the public hospital. Lourdes’s temperature shoots up to 105 degrees. She becomes delirious. The bar buddy wipes sweat dripping from Lourdes’s brow. “Bring my mother. Bring my mother,” Lourdes moans. Lourdes has trouble breathing. A nurse slips an oxygen mask over her face. She gives birth to a girl, Diana.

After two days, Lourdes must leave the hospital. She is still sick and weak. The hospital will hold her baby one more day. Santos has never shown up at the hospital. He isn’t answering their home telephone. His drinking buddy has taken Lourdes’s clothes back to her apartment. Lourdes leaves the hospital wearing a blue paper disposable robe. She -doesn’t even have a pair of underwear. She sits in her apartment kitchen and sobs, longing for her mother, her sister, anyone familiar.

Santos returns the next morning, after a three–day drinking binge. “Ya vino? Has it arrived?” He passes out before Lourdes can answer. Lourdes goes, alone, to get Diana from the hospital.

Santos loses his job making airplane parts. Lourdes falls on a pallet and hurts her shoulder. She complains to her employer about the pain. Two months after Diana’s birth, she is fired. She gets a job at a pizzeria and bar. Santos -doesn’t want her to work there. One night, Santos is drunk and jealous that Lourdes has given a male co-worker a ride home. He punches Lourdes in the chest, knocking her to the ground. The next morning, there is coagulated blood under the skin on her breast. “I won’t put up with this,” Lourdes tells herself.

When Diana is one year old, Santos decides to visit Honduras. He promises to choose wise investments there and multiply the several thousand dollars the couple has scrimped to save. Instead, Santos spends the money on a long drinking binge with a fifteen–year–old girl on his arm. He -doesn’t call Lourdes again.

By the time Santos is gone for two months, Lourdes can no longer make car and apartment payments. She rents a garage—really a converted single carport. The owners have thrown up some walls, put in a door, and installed a toilet. There is no kitchen. It costs $300 a month.

Lourdes and Diana, now two years old, share a mattress on the concrete floor. The roof leaks, the garage floods, and slugs inch up the mattress and into bed. She can’t buy milk or diapers or take her daughter to the doctor when she gets sick. Sometimes they live on emergency welfare.

Unemployed, unable to send money to her children in Honduras, Lourdes takes the one job available: work as a fichera at a Long Beach bar called El Mar Azul Bar #1. It has two pool tables, a long bar with vinyl stools, and a red–and–blue neon façade. Lourdes’s job is to sit at the bar, chat with patrons, and encourage them to keep buying grossly overpriced drinks for her. Her first day is filled with shame. She imagines that her brothers are sitting at the bar, judging her. What if someone she knows walks into the bar, recognizes her, and word somehow gets back to Lourdes’s mother in Honduras? Lourdes sits in the darkest corner of the bar and begins to cry. “What am I doing here?” she asks herself. “Is this going to be my life?”

For nine months, she spends night after night patiently listening to drunken men talk about their problems, how they miss their wives and children left behind in Mexico.

A friend helps Lourdes get work cleaning oil refinery offices and houses by day and ringing up gasoline and cigarette sales at a gas station at night. Lourdes drops her daughter off at school at 7 a.m., cleans all day, picks Diana up at 5 p.m., drops her at a babysitter, then goes back to work until 2 a.m. She fetches Diana and collapses into bed. She has four hours to sleep.

Some of the people whose houses she cleans are kind. One woman in Redondo Beach always cooks Lourdes lunch and leaves it on the stove for her. Another woman offers, “Anything you want to eat, there is the fridge.” Lourdes tells both, “God bless you.”

Others seem to revel in her humiliation. One woman in posh Palos Verdes demands that she scrub her living room and kitchen floors on her knees instead of with a mop. It exacerbates her arthritis. She walks like an old lady some days. The cleaning liquids cause her skin to slough off her knees, which sometimes bleed. The woman never offers Lourdes a glass of water.

There are good months, though, when she can earn $1,000 to $1,200 cleaning offices and homes. She takes extra jobs, one at a candy factory for $2.25 an hour. Besides the cash for Enrique, every month she sends $50 each to her mother and Belky.

Those are her happiest moments, when she can wire money. Her greatest dread is when there is no work and she can’t. That and random gang shootings. “La muerte nunca te avisa cuando viene,” Lourdes says. “Death never announces when it is going to come.” A small park near her apartment is a gang hangout. When Lourdes returns home in the middle of the night, gangsters come up and ask for money. She always hands over three dollars, sometimes five. What would happen to her children if she died?

The money Lourdes sends is no substitute for her presence. Belky, now nine, is furious about the new baby. Their mother might lose interest in her and Enrique, and the baby will make it harder to wire money and save so she can bring them north. “How can she have more children now?” Belky asks.

For Enrique, each telephone call grows more strained. Because he lives across town, he is not often lucky enough to be at María Edelmira’s house when his mother phones. When he is, their talk is clipped and anxious. Quietly, however, one of these conversations plants the seed of an idea. Unwittingly, Lourdes sows it herself.

“When are you coming home?” Enrique asks. She avoids an answer. Instead, she promises to send for him very soon.

It had never occurred to him: if she will not come home, then maybe he can go to her. Neither he nor his mother realizes it, but this kernel of an idea will take root. From now on, whenever Enrique speaks to her, he ends by saying, “I want to be with you.”

“Come home,” Lourdes’s own mother begs her on the telephone. “It may only be beans, but you always have food here.” Pride forbids it. How can she justify leaving her children if she returns empty–handed? Four blocks from her mother’s place is a white house with purple trim. It takes up half a block behind black iron gates. The house belongs to a woman whose children went to Washington, D.C., and sent her the money to build it. Lourdes cannot afford such a house for her mother, much less herself.

But she develops a plan. She will become a resident and bring her children to the United States legally. Three times, she hires storefront immigration counselors who promise help. She pays them a total of $3,850. But the counselors never deliver.

One is a supposed attorney near downtown Los Angeles. Another is a blind man who says he once worked at the INS. Lourdes’s friends say he’s helped them get work papers. A woman in Long Beach, whose house she cleans, agrees to sponsor her residency. The blind man dies of diabetes. Soon after, Lourdes gets a letter from the INS. Petition denied.

She must try again. A chance to get her papers comes from someone Lourdes trusts. Dominga is an older woman with whom Lourdes shares an apartment. Dominga has become Lourdes’s surrogate mother. She loans Lourdes money when she runs short. She gives her advice on how to save so she can bring her children north. When Lourdes comes home late, she leaves her tamales or soup on the table, under the black velvet picture of the Last Supper.

Dominga is at the Los Angeles INS office. She’s there to try to help a son arrested in an immigration raid. A woman walks up to her in the hallway. My name, she tells Dominga, is Gloria Patel. I am a lawyer. I have friends inside the INS who can help your son become legal. In fact, I work for someone inside the INS. She hands Dominga her business card. immigration -consultant. legal professional services. It has a drawing of the Statue of Liberty. Residency costs $3,000 per person up front, $5,000 total. Find five or six interested immigrants, the woman tells Dominga, and I’ll throw in your son’s residency papers for free.

“I found a woman, a great attorney!” Dominga tells Lourdes. “She can make us legal in one month.” At most, three months. Dominga convinces other immigrants in her apartment complex to sign up. Initially, the recruits are skeptical. Some accompany Dominga to Patel’s office. It is a suite in a nice building that also houses the Guatemalan Consulate. The waiting room is full. Two men loudly discuss how Patel has been successful in legalizing their family members. Patel shows Dominga papers—proof, she says, that her son’s legalization process is already under way.

They leave the office grateful that Patel has agreed to slash her fee to $3,500 and require only $1,000 per person as a first installment. Lourdes gives Patel what she has: $800.

Soon Patel demands final payments from everyone to keep going. Lourdes balks. Should she be sending this money to her children in Honduras instead? She talks to Patel on the phone. She claims to be Salvadoran but sounds Colombian.

Patel is a smooth talker. “How are you going to lose out on this amazing opportunity? Almost no one has this opportunity! And for this incredible price.”

“It’s that there are a lot of thieves here. And I don’t earn much.” “Who said I’m going to rob you?”

Lourdes prays. God, all these years, I have asked you for only one thing: to be with my children again. She hands over another $700. Others pay the entire $3,500.

Patel promises to send everyone’s legalization papers in the mail. A week after mailing in the last payments, several migrants go back to her office to see how things are going. The office is shuttered. Gloria Patel is gone. Others in the building say she had rented space for one month. The papers the migrants were shown were filled–out applications, nothing more.

Lourdes berates herself for not dating an American who asked her out long ago. She could have married him, maybe even had her children here by now . . .

Lourdes wants to give her son and daughter some hope. “I’ll be back next Christmas,” she tells Enrique.

Enrique fantasizes about Lourdes’s expected homecoming in December. In his mind, she arrives at the door with a box of Nike shoes for him. “Stay,” he pleads. “Live with me. Work here. When I’m older, I can help you work and make money.”

Christmas arrives, and he waits by the door. She does not come. Every year, she promises. Each year, he is disappointed. Confusion finally grows into anger. “I need her. I miss her,” he tells his sister. “I want to be with my mother. I see so many children with mothers. I want that.”

One day, he asks his grandmother, “How did my mom get to the United States?” Years later, Enrique will remember his grandmother’s reply—and how another seed was planted: “Maybe,” María says, “she went on the trains.” “What are the trains like?”

“They are very, very dangerous,” his grandmother says. “Many people die on the trains.”

When Enrique is twelve, Lourdes tells him yet again that she will come home.

“Sí,” he replies. “Va, pues. Sure. Sure.”

Enrique senses a truth: very few mothers ever return. He tells her that he -doesn’t think she is coming back. To himself, he says, “It’s all one big lie.”

The calls grow tense. “Come home,” he demands. “Why do you want to be there?”

“It’s all gone to help raise you.”

Lourdes has nightmares about going back, even to visit, without residency documents. In the dreams, she hugs her children, then realizes she has to return to the United States so they can eat well and study. The plates on the table are empty. But she has no money for a smuggler. She tries to go back on her own. The path becomes a labyrinth. She runs through zigzagging corridors. She always ends up back at the starting point. Each time, she awakens in a sweat.

Another nightmare replays an incident when Belky was two years old. Lourdes has potty–trained her daughter. But Belky keeps pooping in her pants. “Puerca! You pig!” Lourdes scolds her daughter. Once, Lourdes snaps. She kicks Belky in the bottom. The toddler falls and hits her face on the corner of a door. Her lip splits open. Lourdes can’t reach out and console her daughter. Each time, she awakens with Belky’s screams ringing in her ears.

All along, Enrique’s mother has written very little; she is barely literate and embarrassed by it. Now her letters stop. Every time Enrique sees Belky, he asks, “When is our mom coming? When will she send for us?”

Lourdes does consider hiring a smuggler to bring the children but fears the danger. The coyotes, as they are called, are often alcoholics or drug addicts. Usually, a chain of smugglers is used to make the trip. Children are passed from one stranger to another. Sometimes the smugglers abandon their charges.

Lourdes is continually reminded of the risks. One of her best friends in Long Beach pays for a smuggler to bring her sister from El Salvador. During her journey, the sister calls Long Beach to give regular updates on her progress through Mexico. The calls abruptly stop.

Two months later, the family hears from a man who was among the group headed north. The smugglers put twenty–four migrants into an overloaded boat in Mexico, he says. It tipped over. All but four drowned. Some bodies were swept out to sea. Others were buried along the beach, including the missing sister. He leads the family to a Mexican beach. There they unearth the sister’s decomposed body. She is still wearing her high school graduation ring.

Another friend is panic–stricken when her three–year–old son is caught by Border Patrol agents as a smuggler tries to cross him into the United States. For a week, Lourdes’s friend -doesn’t know what’s become of her toddler.

Lourdes learns that many smugglers ditch children at the first sign of trouble. Government–run foster homes in Mexico get migrant children whom authorities find abandoned in airports and bus stations and on the streets. Children as young as three, bewildered, desperate, populate these foster homes.

Víctor Flores, four years old, maybe five, was abandoned on a bus by a female smuggler. He carries no identification, no telephone number. He ends up at Casa Pamar, a foster home in Tapachula, Mexico, just north of the Guatemalan border. It broadcasts their pictures on Central American television so family members might rescue them.

The boy gives his name to Sara Isela Hernández Herrera, a coordinator at the home, but says he does not know how old he is or where he is from. He says his mother has gone to the United States. He holds Hernández’s hand with all his might and will not leave her side. He asks for hugs. Within hours, he begins calling her Mama.

When she leaves work every afternoon, he pleads in a tiny voice for her to stay—or at least to take him with her. She gives him a jar of strawberry marmalade and strokes his hair. “I have a family,” he says, sadly. “They are far away.”

Francisco Gaspar, twelve, from Concepción Huixtla in Guatemala, is terrified. He sits in a hallway at a Mexican immigration holding tank in Tapachula. With a corner of his Charlie Brown T–shirt, he dabs at tears running down his chin. He is waiting to be deported. His smuggler left him behind at Tepic, in the western coastal state of Nayarit. “He -didn’t see that I -hadn’t gotten on the train,” Francisco says between sobs. His short legs had kept him from scrambling aboard. Immigration agents caught him and bused him to Tapachula.

Francisco left Guatemala after his parents died. He pulls a tiny scrap of paper from a pants pocket with the telephone number of his uncle Marcos in Florida. “I was going to the United States to harvest chiles,” he says. “Please help me! Please help me!”

Clutching a handmade cross of plastic beads on a string around his neck, he leaves his chair and moves frantically from one stranger to another in the hallway. His tiny chest heaves. His face contorts in agony. He is crying so hard that he struggles for breath. He asks each of the other migrants to help him get back to his smuggler in Tepic. He touches their hands. “Please take me back to Tepic! Please! Please!”

For Lourdes, the disappearance of her ex–boyfriend, Santos, hits closest to home. When Diana is four years old, her father returns to Long Beach. Soon after, Santos is snared in an INS raid of day laborers waiting for work on a street corner and deported. Lourdes hears he has again left Honduras headed for the United States. He never arrives. Not even his mother in Honduras knows what has happened to him. Eventually, Lourdes concludes that he has died in Mexico or drowned in the Rio Grande.

“Do I want to have them with me so badly,” she asks herself of her children, “that I’m willing to risk their losing their lives?” Besides, she does not want Enrique to come to California. There are too many gangs, drugs, and crimes.

In any event, she has not saved enough. The cheapest coyote, immigrant advocates say, charges $3,000 per child. Female coyotes want up to $6,000. A top smuggler will bring a child by commercial flight for $10,000. She must save enough to bring both children at once. If not, the one left in Honduras will think she loves him or her less. Enrique despairs. He will simply have to do it himself. He will go find her. He will ride the trains. “I want to come,” he tells her.

Don’t even joke about it, she says. It is too dangerous. Be patient.

Excerpted from the book ENRIQUE'S JOURNEY by Sonia Nazario. Copyright © 2014 by Sonia Nazario. Reprinted with permission of Random House.  

• Sonia Nazario , author of "Enrique's Journey." She tweets @SLNazario .

This segment aired on March 25, 2014.

More from Here & Now

• Ethics & Leadership
• Fact-Checking
• Media Literacy
• The Craig Newmark Center
• Reporting & Editing
• Ethics & Trust
• Tech & Tools
• Business & Work
• Educators & Students
• Training Catalog
• Custom Teaching
• For ACES Members
• All Categories
• Broadcast & Visual Journalism
• Fact-Checking & Media Literacy
• In-newsroom
• Memphis, Tenn.
• Minneapolis, Minn.
• St. Petersburg, Fla.
• Washington, D.C.
• Poynter ACES Introductory Certificate in Editing
• Poynter ACES Intermediate Certificate in Editing
• Ethics & Trust Articles
• Get Ethics Advice
• Fact-Checking Articles
• International Fact-Checking Day
• Teen Fact-Checking Network
• International
• Media Literacy Training
• MediaWise Resources
• Ambassadors
• MediaWise in the News

Support responsible news and fact-based information today!

Schmidle defends sourcing in New Yorker’s ‘Getting bin Laden’ story, while narrative editors suggest improvements

In his recent New Yorker piece, “ Getting Bin Laden ,” Nicholas Schmidle shares a powerful account of what happened the night that Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan . The details in the story, however, didn’t come from the SEALs themselves but from others who had debriefed them. Several readers have since criticized Schmidle for not being clearer about this in the story.

The criticism renews attention to the challenges narrative journalists face when they rely on second-hand accounts, and it raises questions about what they can do to let audiences know more about how they got their information.

Schmidle, a freelance writer who’s written a book about Pakistan , doesn’t think he led readers astray.

“ From the cover flap (‘Nicholas Schmidle talks to the people who planned the mission to find out exactly what happened that night in Abbottabad’) to the language inside, at no point did we mislead the reader into thinking that I had, in fact, interviewed SEALs directly, ” Schmidle told me via email. “It would be unusual, in an article about a highly classified subject, for the reporter to list who he did NOT speak to.” (New Yorker Editor David Remnick has made a similar argument .)

But it’s not a matter of listing who Schmidle didn’t talk to; it’s a matter of describing in greater detail the people he did speak with. Readers want more information about who reporters interviewed so they can judge for themselves how credible a reporter’s sources are.

Attributing sources, verifying second-hand accounts

Tom Huang , assistant managing editor for Sunday and enterprise at the Dallas Morning News, says that when it comes to sourcing, the same standards should apply for narratives and reports. (Reports typically answer the five W’s and are written in language that’s unloaded. Narratives, by contrast, are “ a form of vicarious experience, a virtual reality that transports us from the here and now to some distant place .”)

Huang advises journalists who are relying on second-hand accounts to find other people who can help verify the information.

“I think you can try to find people who’ve had similar experiences and just ask them, ‘Does this ring true?’ In the SEAL story … you could ask former SEALs, ‘Do these recollections ring true? Do things like this seem to happen?’ ” Huang said by phone. “Any additional perspective you can get as a reporter to get a sense as to whether your source is reliable is a good thing.”

Schmidle indicated in a New Yorker live chat that while he didn’t talk to any of the SEALs involved with the raid, he talked to several other reliable sources to verify the information he was given.

“While I’ve said that I did not speak to any of the 23 SEALs who were on the ground in Abbottabad that evening, the notion that I didn’t talk to any SEALs — or other experienced JSOC operators — for this story is simply wrong,” Schmidle told me, noting that every detail in the story was vetted and cross-checked.

The White House, Schmidle said, had announced that SEALs’ names were off-limits to reporters, so he knew from the start that he couldn’t speak with them directly. This information would have been helpful to include in the story — especially for readers who aren’t aware that SEALS don’t typically talk to the media about their work.

To Schmidle’s credit, he did cite many of his sources, but he could have been clearer about where some of the information came from while still protecting the anonymity of the sources he chose not to identify.

Jacqui Banaszynski , who worked for 30 years as a reporter and editor before becoming Knight Chair in Editing at the Missouri School of Journalism, said Schmidle’s piece was “important and very impressive” but would have benefited from more attribution.

“It wouldn’t have to mess up the narrative,” Banaszynski said by phone. “It wouldn’t have to slow down the tension, the forward movement of this piece, or in any way undermined the power of the story he obviously deeply reported. I think it would have actually helped.”

Banaszynski pointed out that early versions of stories about bin Laden’s death changed as new information came in, making it even more critical for Schmidle to be transparent about who he interviewed. By being more transparent, he could have helped assure readers that he was reporting the definitive account of what happened.

It’s not too late for the New Yorker to add more sourcing information to the story, but Schmidle said there are no plans to do so.

Various options for sourcing information

There are workarounds for journalists who don’t want to bog down a narrative with attributions. Some news organizations include “source boxes” in stories to indicate who reporters talked to and how they got their information.

For instance, “ The Girl in the Window ” — a St. Petersburg Times Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a young girl named Danielle — includes a source box that says: “The opening scene and others were reconstructed from interviews with neighbors, the detective, Danielle’s care manager, psychologist, teacher, legal guardian and the judge on her case. Additional information came from hundreds of pages of police reports, medical records and court documents.”

Other news organizations use footnotes or annotations. In a story about an army medic , Atlanta Magazine’s Thomas Lake included a link to a separate page listing who he interviewed, the documents he used, and the events he witnessed.

Ideally, narrative writers would like to witness the scenes they write about instead of recreating them based on sources’ memories or second-hand accounts. Memories, as we know, aren’t always reliable.

“I think some narrative writers — and I can’t speak to Schmidle — try to write as if they’re in the heads of the people they’re writing about,” said Huang, who’s also an adjunct faculty member at Poynter. “I think they need to be very cautious about that. We can describe what people do, and we can have people talking about what their intentions and motivations and feelings are, and we can have other people judge the character of that, but it’s very hard to describe precisely what a person is thinking at any given moment.”

It can help to include words such as “recalled” and “remembered” because they remind readers that the information is based on sources’ memories.

Some of the words in Schmidle’s piece raised questions for readers. He wrote that the story was based on the SEALs’ “recollections” — an interesting way of putting it given that he didn’t hear the SEALs’ recollections first-hand.

When I asked Schmidle about this, he said recollections can be relayed in a variety of ways — through first-hand interviews, but also through transcripts, photographs, audio recordings, internal memos and debriefing sessions.

“There are multiple ways to access someone’s experience besides interviewing them,” he said. “That’s part of the challenge — and excitement — of reporting and writing narrative nonfiction.”

Still, Banaszynski said she thought Schmidle’s use of the word was misleading.

“A pull-back on that word, or an extra half sentence — ‘recollections given in debriefings to officials’ — would have helped me know where that reporting led him,” she said.

Being transparent, proving credibility

Journalists have talked for years about how to handle attributions in narratives. Ben Montgomery , a narrative writer at Poynter’s St. Petersburg Times, said the Jayson Blair scandal forced journalists to reassess how much they should tell readers about the reporting process. Many narrative writers began to reveal more details about where they got their information — and they were recognized for doing so.

“Enrique’s Journey,” a heavily footnoted series, won the Pulitzer Prize the same year as the Blair scandal. The Pulitzer board said the story was “exhaustively reported.” Some stories that had been previously in the running for the prize but weren’t as well-sourced were criticized for not including enough attribution.

“The Pulitzer judges were saying: Prove it. Readers were saying: Prove it. And many feature writers responded by showing their cards more often, with footnotes or how-this-story-was-reported boxes or writing that revealed where the information was coming from,” Montgomery said via email. “You saw those efforts in the writing, right down to how journalists chose their words.”

Montgomery attended a narrative conference around the same time as the Blair scandal and recalls hearing The Washington Post’s David Finkel say that narrative journalists had lost some literary freedom and that they’d have to work hard to earn it back. Montgomery remembers Finkel saying that narrative journalists shouldn’t use more active verbs, but more truthful verbs.

Schmidle’s piece, Montgomery said, seems to signal “a movement away from those constrictive rules. It’s not a bad thing, I don’t think, but it comes down to the relationship between readers and publications.”

Journalists like Schmidle, who go to great lengths to tell powerful stories, owe it to themselves and their audience to explain how they got the story.

“I like to peek behind the curtain to see how really gifted journalists do their work,” Banaszynski said. “But I think the public wants to peek behind the curtain, too, and we need to let them.”

Opinion | Gannett fires editor for talking to Poynter, and other media news

Firing a single mother of three who was speaking up for more newsroom resources is a horrible look that deserves scrutiny and criticism.

Donald Trump repeated inaccurate claims on the economy in a local news interview in Pennsylvania

Trump repeated a bevy of inaccurate claims about the economy during an interview with WGAL-TV, a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, station

Opinion | Gannett fired an editor for talking to me

Sarah Leach spoke to Poynter in an attempt to staff up her team. She may have been successful, even if she won't be at Gannett to see it through.

Opinion | Kristi Noem’s media headaches now extend to conservative outlets

The South Dakota governor’s past few days have been so bad that she’s canceling on conservative media. Conservative media might soon cancel on her.

Q&A: HBO Max’s new ‘Girls on the Bus’ set out to show a cool, fun side of journalism

Former New York Times reporter and show co-creator Amy Chozick on how fact inspired fiction, pitfalls she avoided and today’s media environment

Comments are closed.

Start your day informed and inspired.

Get the Poynter newsletter that's right for you.

• Quick Facts
• Sights & Attractions
• Tsarskoe Selo
• Oranienbaum
• Foreign St. Petersburg
• Restaurants & Bars
• Accommodation Guide
• St. Petersburg Hotels
• Serviced Apartments
• Bed and Breakfasts
• Private & Group Transfers
• Airport Transfers
• Concierge Service
• Russian Visa Guide
• Request Visa Support
• Walking Tours
• River Entertainment
• Public Transportation
• Travel Cards
• Essential Shopping Selection
• Business Directory
• Photo Gallery
• Video Gallery
• 360° Panoramas
• Moscow Hotels
• Moscow.Info
• Biographical Museums

Alexander Pushkin Museum and Memorial Apartment

This literary museum, dedicated to Russia's most celebrated poet , stands just a few yards away from Palace Square and two blocks from Nevsky Prospekt on the quiet embankment of the Moika River. The museum is housed in Alexander Pushkin's memorial apartment where he lived between 1836 and 1837, and died after being mortally wounded in a dramatic duel. On a wave of nationwide grief for the untimely death of this major Russian literary figure, Pushkin's apartment was carefully preserved and remains a fine example of a nobleman's residence of the 1830s. Visitors can step into the museum and see the study of the great poet and writer of the famous epic novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin", and the well-known story "The Queen of Spades", both of which were later turned into operas by the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky.

The museum boasts numerous literary and historical exhibitions, charting the life, work and times of arguably Russia's greatest writer.

Accommodation near the Pushkin Museum and Memorial Apartment

Pushka inn hotel, charming small hotel with a prime location steps from alexander pushkin museum, kempinski hotel moika 22, refined luxury hotel just a stone's throw from the alexander pushkin museum, dvory capelly hotel, simple small hotel with unbeatable sightseeing location near pushkin museum, art apartment, stylishly fitted one-bedroom apartment with superb location for sightseeing, apartments on reki moyki emb., charming apartments to rent only five minutes' walk from pushkin museum, longo on bolshaya konyushennaya, cozy one-bedroom apartment to let with great location near the pushkin museum, nevsky 3 guest house, cheap accommodation and friendly service round the corner from the pushkin museum, superior backpacker hostel with strong social life close to pushkin museum, simple hostel, stylish hotels with good reputation and prime location by the pushkin museum, dining near the alexander pushkin museum and memorial apartment, park giuseppe, family-friendly italian restaurant next to the alexander pushkin museum, da albertone, inexpensive, family-friendly italian restaurant close to alexander pushkin museum, russkiy ampir, exceptionally luxurious russian restaurant in the splendid stroganov palace.

We can help you make the right choice from hundreds of St. Petersburg hotels and hostels.

Live like a local in self-catering apartments at convenient locations in St. Petersburg.

Comprehensive solutions for those who relocate to St. Petersburg to live, work or study.

Maximize your time in St. Petersburg with tours expertly tailored to your interests.

Get around in comfort with a chauffeured car or van to suit your budget and requirements.

Book a comfortable, well-maintained bus or a van with professional driver for your group.

Navigate St. Petersburg’s dining scene and find restaurants to remember.

Need tickets for the Mariinsky, the Hermitage, a football game or any event? We can help.

Get our help and advice choosing services and options to plan a prefect train journey.

Let our meeting and events experts help you organize a superb event in St. Petersburg.

We can find you a suitable interpreter for your negotiations, research or other needs.

Get translations for all purposes from recommended professional translators.