Prayers for the Stolen

I don’t like to use direct quotes in my reviews, but it will be hard to resist in this case. (By the way, no quotations marks are used to set apart the dialogue.) As I was reading, I highlighted so many phrases that express so much about a country, a culture, a people, in a single thought. Maybe one that best sums up the mountains near Acapulco is: “In this land one can go out for a walk and find a huge iguana, a papaya tree covered with dozens of large fruits, an enormous anthill, marijuana plants, poppies, or a corpse.” The voice of Ladydi (you have to read to learn why she has that name) is direct and somehow simple – the tone of a child who has grown up seeing things a child shouldn’t see. Her perspective after all is of a very young (sixteen-year-old) person, not knowing what will happen in the future.

Throughout, Ladydi tells her story as it is, not in despair and not overly hopeful. Where she grew up, they create their own terms for things, perhaps to make some more sense of the world. Not having a proper education, the history channel was a poor substitute. A social service requirement brought temporary teachers to visit, though few even tried to teach. Here I feel the need to use another quote: “My mother watched television because it was the only way out of our mountain.” Her mother is toughened by drinking, just as much as she is by their environment. Fearing God, their prayers are for what they would like, not what they need and thus could be taken away.

The second (of three) parts moves much faster than the first. By the third part, her life is turned inside out, with a new set of acquaintances – not necessarily friends like before. All men have long since left the mountain, and the only true boy there got special treatment, though not a guaranteed bright future. Their community was cut in half by a dangerous highway. With this came the reach of the drug trade. Jennifer Clement’s book only furthers my conviction that, in case you need any other reason to not get involved with illegal drugs, it is because of the violence and destruction behind their production. Buying or selling or using drugs supports this violence, physical and structural violence alike. The extravagant indulgence of these drug lords, too, is disgusting in every way.

This is an important read for understanding a little better the relations between the US and Mexico, and the problems people can face in both countries. It is a perfect example of how fiction sometimes tells a more revealing story than nonfiction can. It is also an important work on gender relations, inequalities between men and women. This book is a timely read in 2015, and has the lasting quality to become a classic. I am thankful I had the opportunity to read this title.

Note: I received a free eBook copy of this title through BloggingForBooks in exchange for an honest review. For more reviews, see my blog at http://matt-stats.blogspot.com/