Plano Reads: Join Second Tuesday Book Club on September 10 for ‘Solito’

Second Tuesday Book Club will meet in person and on Zoom from 7-8pm on Tuesday, September 10, in the Public Conference Room at Schimelpfenig Library, to discuss our ninth book of 2024, Solito by Javier Zamora.

Solito is Zamora’s gripping memoir of el viaje, his two-month-long sojourn from El Salvador and through Guatemala and Mexico across the border of the United States at the age of nine. Shepherded by a series of coyotes and in the company of complete strangers, young Javier made the three-thousand-mile journey by boat, bus, van and on foot, enduring hardships that overcame adults more experienced and physically stronger than himself. An award-winning poet, Zamora recounts his harrowing tale in beautiful prose, crafting for the reader detailed images of not only the horrors he encountered, but the great natural beauty as well. Solito is a story of resilience during hardship, but also a hopeful witness to the kindness and generosity of the human heart.

Please email Alice McGoldrick at amcgoldrick@plano.gov or Nicole Border at nborder@plano.gov or you may call Schimelpfenig Library at 972-769-4200, if you have questions or comments.

We look forward to seeing you at the library or on Zoom!

Solito, by Javier Zamora

Available in Print | Print [Spanish] | eBook | eAudiobook | eAudiobook [Spanish] |

“Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago–‘one day, you’ll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.’ Javier’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 except for a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier’s trip is supposed to last two short weeks. At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside a group of strangers who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.

A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito not only provides an immediate and intimate account of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.” –From book jacket.

New York Times Bestseller * Read With Jenna Book Club Pick as seen on Today * Winner of the Los Angeles Times Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiography * Winner of the American Library Association Alex Award

A young poet tells the inspiring story of his migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of nine in this “gripping memoir” (NPR) of bravery, hope, and finding family.

Finalist for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction * One of the New York Public Library’s Ten Best Books of the Year

Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence and the PEN/Open Book Award

“I read Solito with my heart in my throat and did not burst into tears until the last sentence. What a person, what a writer, what a book.”–Emma Straub

“A riveting tale of perseverance and the lengths humans will go to help each other in times of struggle.”–Dave Eggers

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Vulture, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews

Javier Zamora, poet, writer and activist, was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. As we know from his memoir, when he was a year old, his father fled El Salvador due to the Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). His mother then followed her husband’s footsteps in 1995 when Javier was about to turn five. Zamora was left in the care of his grandparents who helped raise him until he migrated to the US when he was nine. His first poetry collection, Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, September 2017), explores some of these themes.

In his debut New York Times bestselling memoir, SOLITO (Hogarth, September 2022), Javier retells his nine-week odyssey across Guatemala, Mexico, and eventually through the Sonoran Desert. He travelled unaccompanied by boat, bus, and foot. After a coyote abandoned his group in Oaxaca, Javier managed to make it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants.

Zamora graduated from UC Berkley and NYU.  He has held fellowships at Stanford and Harvard, as well as Colgate University.  His work has won prizes from the LA Times, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, the Natl Endowment for the Arts and Barnes & Noble, among others.

Zamora was a founder, with poets Marcelo Hernandez Castillo and Christopher Soto (AKA Loma), of the Undocupoets campaign which eliminated citizenship requirements from major first poetry book prizes in the United States. Javier lives in Tucson, AZ, where he volunteers with Salvavision, The Kino Border Initiative, and The Florence Project.