Castillo sketches portrait of child growing in the shadows
Tales of straddling two cultures, two languages, two families
“Children of the Land,” a memoir by acclaimed poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, opens with a family going through the motions of living a normal life. Their normalcy, however, is the expectation of a dreaded knock on the door that will mean ICE agents have descended on their Northern California home in search of Marcelo’s father, who has, in fact, been away from the family for years.
Times being what they are today, contemporary immigration narratives cannot be shared without evoking the accompanying images from television news and social media of family separations, deplorable living conditions and the abject, still-shocking images of children in cages. These are the days of coinages such as “tender age” entering the lexicon.
If we are honest, we have to admit that as incredible and horrific as these situations are, most of us are powerless to help bring about reforms. How many of us have moved on from the initial shock of such images flashing on the screen, deciding that the border really is a world away? It isn’t. It is right here.
Castillo’s memoir brings us back to the issues in a way that makes it impossible to look away. His is not necessarily a recent story of child separation, but he shows us the ways in which the fear and dread never leave — even for someone who has grown into adulthood and managed a significant level of success. The traumas take hold just the same. And they do so for the legions of displaced people embroiled in these power struggles and unwinnable battles every single day.
For Castillo, this immigration story is one that is as old as any other in the United States. He describes his repeated traversing of the border — and how this has happened among the generations of his family.
When Castillo crossed the border into the deserts of California when he was a little boy, he experienced a hysterical blindness. This is a real condition. Heightened anxiety can influence our senses in detrimental ways, including paralysis, numbness and even blindness. Imagine the stress it must take for a boy to experience the loss of his sight in his quiet, discreet suffering.
Castillo’s father is not at home the day the ICE agents knocked on the door because he had been deported from the United States. Castillo’s mother does not follow her husband. He had been abusive at one time, and the care of her children was her main aim. She does the arduous, low-paying work of the immigrants who live in the shadows.
Castillo becomes a DACA graduate student — the first to graduate from the Helen Zell Writer’s Program at the University of Michigan. Even with this tentative status, he still travels to the border. Later, with his green card, he continues this journey.
Castillo’s immigration story isn’t one of crossing into the United States and making his life here. Castillo is, it seems, something of a constant immigrant. He grows up cloaked to some extent in the debilitating emotions of fear and shame. He fears what could happen to his family — to himself. He is ashamed to live tentatively, invisibly.
The country of choice for many Americans seeking asylum from the unspeakable violence of their home countries is the United States —a country we all know is inhospitable to certain immigrants.
In the book’s opening scene, when the ICE agents question Marcelo’s mother and demand evidence that his father has not been in the house recently, Marcelo must stand up to the armed, uniformed men. He can speak English and manage the cell phone that shows the men that if they call his father’s number they will see he is not in the United States.
Castillo must also get through situations by sheer will and wits. By arming himself with the gift of bilingualism and his talent for writing, he is able to move into new spaces not inhabited by most immigrants. In this way, however, he is further “othered,” not just by an unwelcoming white-dominant society, but now also by members of his own community. He must veer away from them to fulfill his destiny to be a formally educated man, an academic, an artist, a poet.
The poetry of this memoir cannot be underestimated. Every image is fraught with the complications of these difficult lives but also with a beauty at once understated and rich that comes with the full weight of candid reflection.
A poet bears his soul on the page with every word, every syllable carefully chosen and offered fully as a way through to inviting understanding and compassion. With every new sentence, Castillo chips away at the walls of disinformation — the stories we think we know about the border — and reveals an immigration story that is too true.
“Children of the Land” is an essential American memoir.