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

Helen Thorpe (Author)

Book Description

Release 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.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (September 22, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416538933
• ISBN-13: 978-1416538936
• Product Dimensions: 1.2 x 6.3 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #641,727 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.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 35 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

Format: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 Read more ›

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting perspectives January 30, 2010

By Kristen VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching Portrait of Four Latino Girls April 26, 2010

By Lynn Ellingwood VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The author follows 4 girls from an urban Denver high school who are both Latina and good students. Two are legal immigrants and two are not. The girls follow the same path in trying to get to college but some are hampered by lack of eligibility of financial aid and cost of international tuition. How they cope in high school, college and beyond are the subject of this book. Even more interesting is how the families are affected around them. Imagine going back to Mexico and leaving your American born children here to fend for themselves or tell the older sibling to watch them. This book puts the story of illegal immigration onto human faces. Very interesting.

31 of 42 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 VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (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.

11 of 15 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars A Human Perspective on A Divisive Issue January 14, 2010

By Adam Rust VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Helen Thorpe presents an account of the lives of four young Mexican-American girls living in Denver in 2004. This is narrative non-fiction, in the spirit of works by Alex Kotlowitz, Tracy Kidder, Norman Mailer, or David Simon.

In the glow of my memories for reading those works, I approached Just Like Us with a lot of excitement. This story holds a lot of relevance. Our nation is riven with emotion about the question of immigration, and the impacts of the new demographics present forces that cannot help but change our country. It is not a new story - the Mexican arrivals are just another iteration of so many that have come before them.

These girls are all involved in the normal transitions for young people "coming of age." They have left high school and are beginning college. They have important social relationships. Their lives are in flux. That is disrupted by a larger event that explodes in Denver. An immigrant commits a murder in a local restaurant. The news strikes a chord in Denver. The fact that the restaurant is owned by a local politician, who had unknowingly employed the assailant in spite of his lack of working papers, provokes a lot of attention from anti-immigration leaders.

Thorpe has one advantage that most of these writers cannot claim. She has the ability to view the lives of the people in her story from two perspectives. She is the wife of the Mayor of Denver. That means that while she spends her days following these girls, she spends her private life participating in her husband's emotional and political sphere. The murder puts her husband in a crisis.

This book covers an event that become a focal point for the political campaign for a Presidential candidate - Tom Tancredo.... He rails against the Mayor and the system, claiming that Denver is a Sanctuary City. The author's perspective is incredible, because she can genuinely claim to understand this event intimately from two opposite worlds: those in power, and those out of power. An example: upon attending the University of Denver, one of the girls meets boyfriend from a privileged Colorado background. He has a political consciousness, albeit one different from her. He is a Republican, with some of the isolationist perspectives held by the anti-immigration groups. He reverts to an opinion that rests upon a legal construct - that legal status should determine political right. Legals have the right to work, to attend school, to receive medical care. Illegals have none of those rights. It is a human narrative that nicely balances the political discourse of the Mayor, of Tom Tancredo, and the other people in power.

My complaint from this book is that the girls themselves are not really that interesting. That is a vulnerability of any piece of narrative non-fiction. If their lives were touched by tragedy directly, it would be one thing. That is not really the case - the larger legal system determines their privilege, but they are able to operate within those confines in a way that allows for relatively normal lives.

I think this book would be a stimulating subject for a book group. It provides a human perspective that aligns the book with the pro-immigration argument, but it still offers a relatively neutral account. I think it would be excellent for any group with a diverse set of opinions. Read more ›