Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America [Hardcover]

Helen Thorpe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 22, 2009

Written by a gifted journalist, a powerful account of four young Mexican women coming of age in Denver—two of whom have legal documentation, two of whom who don’t— and the challenges they face as they attempt to pursue the American dream.

 Just  Like  Ustakes readers on a compelling journey with four  young  Mexican-American  women  who  have  lived in  the  U.S.  since  childhood.  Exploring  not  only  the women’s personal life stories, this book also delves deep into an American subculture and the complex and controversial politics that surround the issue of immigration.

The story opens on the eve of the girls’ senior prom in Denver, Colorado. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, all four want to make it into college and succeed, but only two have immigration papers. Meanwhile, after a Mexican immigrant shoots and kills a local police officer, Colorado becomes the place where national argu- ments over immigration rage most fiercely. As the girls’ lives play out against this backdrop of intense debate over whether they have any right to live here, readers will gain remarkable insight into both the power players and the most vulnerable members of society as they grapple with understanding one of the most complicated social issues of our times.

Moving, timely, and passionately told, Just Like Us is a riv- eting story about girlhood, friendship, identity, and survival.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

By the time Marisela, Yadira, Clara and Elissa—four girls of Mexican descent from the suburbs of Denver—entered their freshman year in high school, they were inseparable, but four years later, their fundamental difference threatened to divide them: Clara and Elissa were legal residents, but Marisela and Yadira had begun to suffer the repercussions of their parents' choice to illegally enter the U.S. Journalist Thorpe, married to Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, met them as the girls without legal status were finding their friends' liberties—big and small—to attend college, drive or even rent a movie unbearable. It was hard for Marisela and Yadira to see why they should labor over their homework if they were just going to end up working at McDonald's, Thorpe writes. Marisela slid into trouble with ease, but Yadira found the experience profoundly disorienting. With striking candor, Thorpe chronicles the girls' lives over four years, delineating the small but arresting differences that will separate them and shape their futures. She personalizes the ongoing debate over immigration and frames it so compassionately and sensibly that even the staunchest opponents of immigration liberalization might find themselves rethinking their positions. (Sept.)
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Review

“Thorpe puts a human face on a frequently obtuse conversation, and in so doing takes us far beyond the political rhetoric." —O Magazine.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (September 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416538933
• ISBN-13: 978-1416538936
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #488,722 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Helen Thorpe is a freelance journalist whose magazine stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York magazine, Texas Monthly, Westword, and 5280. Thorpe has worked for The New York Observer; The New Yorker, where she wrote "Talk of the Town" stories; and Texas Monthly.

Born in London, she grew up in Medford, New Jersey, and now lives in Denver, Colorado. Thorpe is married to John Hickenlooper, the mayor of Denver, and they have one son. She currently serves on the boards of two non-profit organizations that focus on ensuring the success of all children, particularly those who are growing up in poverty (the Clayton Foundation and the Colorado Children's Campaign). Just Like Us is her first book.

Photograph by Andrew Clark: www.andrewclarkphotography.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Double Standards Illustrate Illegals' Dilemmas, October 2, 2009

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Hardcover)

Four Mexican girls, two legal immigrants born in the United States, and two illegals born in Mexico with legal siblings born in the US, grew up as best friends in junior high and high school. Just Like Us reads like a detective novel as Helen Thorpe shows how they cope with these similarities and differences--how they manage to get real or fake IDs, drivers' licenses, jobs, and college financial aid--all the while dealing with deported parents, boyfriends, and peer pressure. Finally, when an illegal immigrant teenager murders a Denver police officer, additional obstacles emerge to thwart their happy friendships as their differences become even more evident. As Thorpe, wife of Denver's mayor, relates, "All of us found ourselves in new territory, far from our point of origin. I didn't know what the rules were anymore."

Through reading this book, I learned to care about how these girls survived the conflicting laws in the US that seemed, for the most part, to prevent them from achieving the American dream. Thorpe relates to their dilemmas, having been an immigrant herself. She documents how their fiercest opponent, Tom Tancredo, himself offspring of immigrant grandparents, tries to gain political capital by blocking illegal immigrants from receiving decent educational programs, health care, and respect. At the same time, the Mexican immigrants--both legal and illegal--must pick fruit and vegetables, clean dirty buildings, and remodel other wealthy citizens' houses in order to survive.

As Thorpe weaves these girls' lives through the events swirling around them, I found myself staying up late to read one more chapter, or two, or three before going to sleep. Thorpe wrapped up this incomplete story with a question as there really is no ending to the dilemma of illegal immigration with its many personalities and complex rules. She asks "Did the idea of a country--an abstract concept, really--truly matter more than the sum happiness of all the individuals living without its boundaries? No, I thought. People mattered more than governments. In fact, this country was founded on that very idea."

by Susan M. Andrus
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

24 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Docudrama Doesn't Translate To Book Format, December 6, 2009

By 

Geneva Lewis (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Helen Thorpe had a good idea: capture the saga of four Latina high schoolers, two of whom are legal citizens and two who are not. The cover with the doe- eyed depressed teen's photo should have warned me that this would have a thudding, "after-school special" quality, and it does. Great concept; good representatives are found in Marisela, Yadira, Clara, and Elissa. However, Thorpe's approach is somewhat helter-skelter: Is it political, personal profile, or third-person characterizations from afar? Unfortunately, it's a little bit of all three, and I felt as though the story is the equivalent of a carriage with its wheels stuck in the mud. Where, or how, are we going? Unlike oral historians such as Studs Terkel, we are not given the sense of each person; each young woman is always filtered through Thorpe's slightly priggish, English schoolmarm eyes. The section where she sat on the periphery during a graduation night party at a Mexican nightclub in Denver would be the prototype for my argument. Too many people, too many stories, too many agendas. The story would have been well told as a documentary with visual storytelling. I'm sorry to say I could never get excited about this book.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting perspectives, January 30, 2010

By 

Kristen (Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

First of all, I was intrigued about and somewhat wary of the whole idea of tying the characters together with the prom. I was afraid that it would read like an extended cliche, but Just Like Us is no cliche: It is absolutely real. The girls who are the subjects of the book lead complicated and difficult lives at times, and citizenship is an ever-looming entity that both unites and divides the girls. I found this to be the most engaging part of the book. Immigration law is by no means clarified, and if anything, this is what the book exposes. Immigration and citizenship are more than simply passage of laws and enforcing policy- This is how such laws and processes affect real people. I agree with another reviewer in that the book has an "after-school special" feel to it, but it does delve deeper than that. I would encourage anyone who has strong opinions about illegal immigration, immigration policy, and amnesty to pick up this book and peek into the lives of real people whose lives are affected on every level by these issues.