Everything is Far from Here

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1. I choose this specific short story, Everything is Far from Here by Christina Henriquez, because I felt that the story is very important, and the most meaningful to me. This story brings awareness of the conditions of these facilities that immigrants are brought to and how they are treated everyday. There are a lot of mothers and fathers looking for and waiting for their children that were separated from them during the processes of getting to the United States. I felt it was important to choose Everything is Far From Here, just to bring more attention to her story, and the story of many people in her shoes. The imagery of the of this short story really stood out to me personally. The imagery of the bunk beds all lined up, and her searching for her young son, was really impactful to me personally. It made me feel upset and anxious, and the want to change the way that things work in this country. To get the perspective of this woman going through this is really eye-opening, and it makes me question a lot of things that work the way that they do in this country.
2. I choose a couple quotes from the story that were the most memorable to me. The first one being the opening line, ” On the first day there is a sense of relief”, I felt that putting this quote on the cover before it gets to the deeper more depressing and eye-opening content kind of mimicked the way that I felt when I first read the story. I was expecting it to be about a journey that had just ended and the main character getting to think back on it and feel safe in where ever she had just arrived. The inside pages, I just drew some drawings that I felt represented the quotes that I choose. For instance the bunk beds, for the bunk bed quote. I drew a Spiderman tee shirt by the quote where she is asking where her son is, as the mother said that that was the short that he was wearing when they were separated. I also choose to attempt to draw a gun on the page where she was talking to the lawyer because of the way that the gun was involved in the scene that she described when the boys raped her. The hand on the page with three quotes is meant to be her hand reaching out for what she believed to be her son, but it ended up not being him. I chose to draw an American flag on the back cover, with the “American Superhero’s” quote to represent that America tries to cover stories like this up, the US tries to silence immigrants that have fled to our country. They do not want the bad conditions of these places brought into public view very much, so I felt that an American Flag closing the book would be meaningful.