“Offers hope in the face of desperate odds” – ELLE Magazine, ELLE’s Most Anticipated Books of Summer 2020“[D]isturbing and unforgettable memoir…This wrenching story brings to vivid life the plight of the many families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.” – Publisher’s Weekly, STARRED REVIEW“[The] haunting and eloquent…narrative of a Guatemalan woman’s desperate search for a better life.” -… of a Guatemalan woman’s desperate search for a better life.” –Kirkus, STARRED Review
PEOPLE Magazine Best Books of Summer 2020
TIME Magazine Best Books of Summer 2020
PARADE Best Books of Summer 2020
Compelling and urgently important, The Book of Rosy is the unforgettable story of one brave mother and her fight to save her family.
When Rosayra “Rosy” Pablo Cruz made the agonizing decision to seek asylum in the United States with two of her children, she knew the journey would be arduous, dangerous, and quite possibly deadly. But she had no choice: violence—from gangs, from crime, from spiraling chaos—was making daily life hell. Rosy knew her family’s one chance at survival was to flee Guatemala and go north.
After a brutal journey that left them dehydrated, exhausted, and nearly starved, Rosy and her two little boys arrived at the Arizona border. Almost immediately they were seized and forcibly separated by government officials under the Department of Homeland Security’s new “zero tolerance” policy. To her horror Rosy discovered that her flight to safety had only just begun.
In The Book of Rosy, with an unprecedented level of sharp detail and soulful intimacy, Rosy tells her story, aided by Julie Schwietert Collazo, founder of Immigrant Families Together, the grassroots organization that reunites mothers and children. She reveals the cruelty of the detention facilities, the excruciating pain of feeling her children ripped from her arms, the abiding faith that staved off despair—and the enduring friendship with Julie, which helped her navigate the darkness and the bottomless Orwellian bureaucracy.
A gripping account of the human cost of inhumane policies, The Book of Rosy is also a paean to the unbreakable will of people united by true love, a sense of justice, and hope for a better future.
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I received a free electronic copy of this memoir from Netgalley, Rosayra Pablo Cruz, and publisher HarperCollins – Harper One. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this memoir of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I heartily encourage friends and family to read The Book of Rosy. This is an honest look into the policy of separation of families at the border being experienced by those refugees seeking political asylum in the United States. Many of us live just an hour to two from the border. This is happening at our back door.
I personally live just one hour from the international bridge at El Paso, Texas – Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua (El Paso-Juarez). We border locals do what we can – there are baskets at the exits to our local grocery stores for non-perishable food donations to this cause, and most of the thrift stores in this area would let you donate a box of solidly packed assorted clothing for $10. Of course, the Corona Virus has us currently shut-in and nothing is being recycled anywhere – and this problem of asylum seekers being separated and jailed has not shut down even during the pandemic. New Mexico has International bridges at Antelope Wells, New Mexico – El Berrendo; Chihuahua; Columbus, New Mexico – Palomas, Chihuahua; and Santa Teresa, New Mexico – San Jerónimo, Chihuahua. California has six border crossing areas and Texas and Arizona have many crossing areas so you can see that this is not a casual problem for us southwesterners, even in the best of times.
At this moment there are still many children removed from their families years ago who are ‘lost’ in the details. I cannot imagine how that could happen, but it has been and is still a problem. For-Profit containment areas for these mothers and fathers are poorly run and inhumane for the most part and in many the virus is rampant. There is no such thing as social distancing in a prison environment. For example, my New Mexico county of Otero has as of today just 8 cases of the virus, with two deaths. Our jails, however, have 79 confirmed cases at the county prison and 66 at the ICE processing center on the Texas border as of Friday, May 22.
We live in a world filled with refugees rampant on all continents. As a world, we have to learn how to settle these problems before they happen. I don’t have the solution but a little reinspection of the works of Mandela and Gandhi come to mind as a pattern to emulate.
Please, read this book. Rosayra is only one of many abused by this system. And VOTE! Study your options well, and be first in line at the polls this fall. We do have a voice, at least in spirit, so do what you can, where you are, to bring humanity back to governments around the world.