SPOILER ALERT:The following are excerpts from my book club's fb timeline:Into the Beautiful North Discussion Question #1:"After travelling thousands of miles in search of her father, Nayeli is unable to confront him. In your opinion, does she make the right decision to heed his words at this time--'all things must pass'--or should she have approached him?"I think Nayeli was operating under the assumption that her mission was going to save her community--that taking her father back home would be saving him and her, her family, the town, her country, her class of people. I think that, when she saw her father, happy in his new life, that she realized she would be taking away from his new family and not saving him. I think that she realized her father had made a decision to be happy that didn't include her or Mexico, and she didn't feel right making him feel guilty out of a sense of compassion and love. I think the trip she took to get to IL allowed her to understand what a struggle it was for immigrants to find work, love, happiness, and nice people to start a family and new community with. I think she realized that her father experienced the same difficulties and chose not to make another dangerous journey back, a journey that would have been made more dangerous with a newborn and an extra body, a journey that would have ended in a painful realization for his daughter and former wife (had he brought his new family with him). And, if he chose to leave his new family behind, he would have broken their hearts like he had Nayeli's and her mother's. I think she cut her losses and made the choice to cause the least amount of pain for others. I think she acted unselfishly.Failure to remain Mexican=American success. And as for your last point, I agree--her papa would have been faced with an impossible question, one I'd bet is fairly common.Into the Beautiful North Discussion Question #2:What do you make of the overwhelming turnout produced by Aunt Irma's interviews? Why do so many men want to return to Mexico? Does this strike you as ironic?I think the time period that Urrea was writing about was during the wave of men leaving Latin America without their families. The next wave was predominantly women, and the new wave is largely children. I imagine that, to make a generalization, the Hispanic men who started working in the United States missed their family terribly and were not convinced that living in the Golden Cage of America was worth giving up their values as human beings. I also think that perhaps ego was involved insofar as the men who left their families did not feel that their departure was a completely valiant act to save their families. I think that many families disintegrate with distance and many of the immigrants needed to do something that counteracted some guilt, cowardice, or selfishness they felt as a consequence of leaving their families. Urrea could have painted a more sinister portrait of the immigrant experience in America, but he chose to balance the hardships with humor in a way that could be easily digested in a popular fiction format. That he chose not to address the overwhelming turnout of men for Aunt Irma's interviews to me was a subtle way in which Urrea gave us another insight into the hardships of the immigrant experience without spelling it out for us, just like he does with Nayeli's decision to turn around once she sees her father.I'm into the slang and the Spanglish too--I don't hear much of it in NC and it makes me smile. And now that you mention it, I was having a hard time really getting into the book until they started the journey and Nayeli started showing some leadership and bravery. I'm up to chapter 28 now and Nayeli is the only female character I've liked. It is a little frustrating that Urrea waited until deep in the second half of the book to use plot points to bring out her character... Is he implying that challenges are what help us to grow into ourselves? Is he allowing us to explore our prejudices about small town, young Mexican women while he builds the mounting action? I guess the vapid characterization of the girls confuses me because I assumed that girls who grew up without men would flourish in the absence of sexism... but I suppose internalized sexism takes more than a generation to work itself out. Urrea does a great job layering humor and humanity into the characters--that's how I got hooked. But yeah, the girls have been a little underwhelming. But honestly, I haven't met enough people like the lady triad to say he got the characterization wrong and it might be my cultural bias based on my own experiences. I'd probably rate this 3.5 stars if I could. I enjoyed the book as an account of one aspect (albeit an important one) of the complex relationship between Mexico and the US. It is breezy and a fast read, and Urrea has a gift with descriptions of places. The characters struck me as a bit two-dimensional, though. I'd also say that the blurbs on the back cover, which describe the book as 'riotously funny' are, in my view, wildly over-wrought. While some elements of humor exist (Atomiko, for instance), this is not a laugh-out-loud work of comedy, since even those moments of humor are always leavened by the grim realities of poverty and broken lives that mark the border. I realize, of course, that Urrea is not responsible for the blurbs. Still, it ultimately struck me as almost a surrealist piece of fiction, in which an incredibly serious topic (the border, illegal immigration, problems within Mexico, etc) is treated in a movie-like manner, in which all problems disappear and a happy ending results. I guess I'm trying to say that I liked the book but did not love it. And sometimes that's okay.
What do You think about Into The Beautiful North (2009)?
I really can't tell you much about this book. It was just plain boring to me, with characters so severely underdeveloped I couldn't keep them straight. Character development is so important to me. You can keep me interested in a book by making me care about the characters. When even the main character isn't developed past being a name on a page, I'm not going to get far before I just give up.I felt like each sentence only tangentially had anything to do with the sentence before it or the sentence after it. It was a series of paragraphs so meandering that I can't even write a review that isn't completely meandering itself.I'd get through a few pages and realize that I have no idea what I just read and that, oh, I'm in the middle of what's supposed to be a climax, but nothing really made me care.(Sorry Kate!!)
—Avera_Gates95
I fell in absolute love with one of Urrea's other novels so I decided to purchase an e-book version of Into the Beautiful North. While Urrea does continue with his gorgeous and fun character sketches and intense imagery, I felt Into the Beautiful North missed the mark. It is meandering and lost at times, and that caused me to lose interest and have to re-read parts (which is very unlike me). It is not one I will pick again to re-read, unfortunately.
—barbie
Illegal immigration a very timely topic
—rubychipato
