Greenwich Reads Together Announces Book Selection For 2023

The following release is from Greenwich Library:

GREENWICH, CT — Greenwich Library is thrilled to announce that the critically acclaimed memoir Solito by Javier Zamora has been named the Greenwich Reads Together book selection for 2023. Zamora will speak in the Berkley Theater at Greenwich Library on Tuesday, November 14 at 7 p.m. Greenwich Reads Together is sponsored by the Friends of Greenwich Library.

In Solito, a young poet tells the inspiring story of his unaccompanied migration from El Salvador to the United States at the age of 9. It’s a memoir full of bravery, hope, survival, and the overwhelming desire to find family and happiness.

Greenwich Reads Together is Greenwich Library’s community-wide reading experience that engages all of Greenwich in exploring a single book. It is supported each year by the Friends of Greenwich Library. In 2022, thousands of Greenwich residents participated in events around
Olga Dies Dreaming by Xochitl Gonzalez.

This year’s title was chosen by the GRT Selection Committee, led by Peterson Business Librarian Siobhan Schugmann. To be selected, the book must be of literary quality, reflective of universal issues and capable of generating thought-provoking discussions. It must lend itself to engaging public programs and appeal to a diverse population. It also needs to be currently in print and available in large quantities and in multiple formats, including eBook, audiobook, and large print.

Solito (Hogarth) won the 2022 LA Times-Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose and the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Boosted by rave reviews in the
Times, NPR, and Kirkus, which called Solito a “beautifully wrought work that renders the migrant experience into a vivid, immediately accessible portrayal,” the book debuted on The New York Times bestseller list when it was released in September 2022, making Zamora the first Salvadoran author to make the famed list.

Solito follows 9-year-old Javier (“Chepito”) as he leaves his aunt and grandparents in La Herradura, El Salvador and begins a perilous, 3,000-mile journey through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert in hopes of being reunited with his parents in “La USA.” Traveling alone amid a group of strangers, with a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier is told his trip will last just two weeks. What follows is two months of travel – dangerous boat trips and hikes through the desert, pointed guns, arrests, Border Patrol – all told through the eyes of a child.

“Zamora writes in such a way that you never forget that this harrowing journey is being experienced by a child,” The New York Times wrote. “This innocence is contrasted with the challenges that Zamora faces … in telling this story from a child’s perspective, describing his surroundings with plainness, presenting his survival without bluster, he reveals the true horrors of migration.”

“The journey was a goodbye letter to my childhood,” Zamora said in an interview with Public Books. “Certain circumstances make children, sometimes as young as 4, younger than I was, lose a formative part of their brain development. I hope … that people will see the heartbreak of a little kid having to grow up and say goodbye to his childhood in order to survive.”

Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. When he was a year old, his father fled El Salvador due to the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). His mother followed her husband’s footsteps in 1995 when Javier was about to turn 5. Zamora was left in the care of his grandparents who helped raise him until he migrated to the U.S. when he was 9.

Zamora earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Master of Fine Arts from New York University. He was a 2018-2019 Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University (Olive B. O'Connor), the MacDowell Colony, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, Poetry Foundation (Ruth Lilly), Stanford University (Stegner), and Yaddo. He is the recipient of a 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, the 2017 Narrative Prize, and the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. He is also the author of the chapbook Nueve Años Inmigrantes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2011) and the poetry collection Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, 2017).

Zamora will speak in the Berkley Theater at Greenwich Library on Tuesday, November 14 at 7 p.m. Registration will open in October for this in-person and streamed event. A recording will be available after the event to registered patrons only.

Solito is available at the Greenwich Library in eBook format, along with physical and digital audiobook copies and other formats. For additional suggested titles for younger readers, please visit www.greenwichreadstogether.org. While there, find links to author interviews, book discussion guides, and reviews.

Greenwich Reads Together is made possible through the support of The Friends of Greenwich Library.

The 2023 Selection Committee was led by Librarians Siobhan Schugmann and Joanne Gaither, and included Amy Fleishman, Community Volunteer; Melissa Fox, Library Clerk; Daisy Florin, Community Volunteer; Kathy McCormack, Perrot Memorial Library Board President; Hollister Sturges, Retired Men’s Association of Greenwich; and Stephen Schmidt, Manager of Greenwich Library Resources Management.

GRT's founding organizations include Greenwich Library, Greenwich Alliance for Education, Greenwich Arts Council, Greenwich Historical Society, Greenwich Pen Women and the Greenwich Public and Independent Schools, Perrot Memorial Library, and Retired Men’s Association of Greenwich.

Previous Greenwich Reads Together selections include Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Deacon King Kong (2021), Just Mercy and Mountains Beyond Mountains (2020), Fahrenheit 451 (2019), Code Girls (2018), News of the World (2017), Station Eleven (2016), Americanah (2015), The Boys in the Boat (2014), When the Emperor Was Divine (2013), Zeitoun (2012), and The Book Thief (2011).