Hope on the Border: Immigration, Incarceration, and the Power of Poetry

From an award-winning poet comes a humanizing story of immigration shown through the lens of undocumented, unaccompanied children and the poems they write.

“Heartfelt . . . a surprisingly uplifting call to reform an unjust system.” –Publishers Weekly

In heart-wrenching prose, Seth Michelson faces the U.S. immigration crisis head on―by learning and sharing the stories of migrating people fleeing violence and poverty, and by leading workshops for minors held inside a maximum-security detention center. Highlighting the experiences of people desperate for safety, Michelson tirelessly fights for justice and their freedom. Guided through the powerful medium of poetry, the children share their pasts, struggles, hopes, and dreams. Among them, Carlitos, a 13-year-old boy who escaped a gang to try to make a safe and honest life on his own after his mother’s death, and Karla, a teenager whose family begged her to flee for safety after she was shot. Remarkably, they and other children from similar circumstances express themselves with honesty, passion, and optimism for a better future.
 
Michelson also introduces us to migrating people at the border, including a woman who was chased from her home amid violence, and a dedicated father who was arrested and beaten while searching for work to make a more secure life for his wife and daughter.
 
Whether relating experiences in a Mexican refugee camp or a U.S. immigration detention center, Michelson’s prose is brisk and gripping, offering hard-earned insights into ways we might create a better immigration system that treats all people with dignity.

 

Seth Michelson is an award-winning professor who has gained recognition from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Fulbright Foundation. He is the author of academic articles, book introductions, film and book reviews, and fourteen books of poetry and poetry in translation. His work has been published in English and Spanish in Argentina, Mexico, England, and Italy, among other countries. He currently teaches at Washington and Lee University in Virginia where he is the chair of Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.