‘Journey’ across borders comes to Towson

Five percent of students currently enrolled at Towson University are international students, according to the International Student and Scholar Office.

These students are referred to as “non-immigrants” because they have temporary visas allowing them to receive an education in the United States.

For many of these students, a plane, train or bus ticket was enough to unite them with their higher purpose of education.

For one 16-year-old Honduran boy named Enrique, the journey to the U.S. to find his mother was a little more complex.

Sonia Nazario, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Enrique’s Journey,” will speak in the Chesapeake Rooms in the University Union on Wednesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m.

In celebration of International Education Week, which begins on Monday, the foreign language department decided to celebrate Wednesday as Foreign Languages Day. 

When the department chair suggested a speaker as the cumulating event for the day, associate professor Lea Ramsdell saw the opportunity to discuss both language and immigration.

“Many of the people at Towson University, be they students, faculty, staff or workers, are immigrants or the children of immigrants,” Ramsdell said in an e-mail. “Some of them have personal stories that are not unlike the one that Sonia Nazario tells about Enrique.”

Nazario, a journalist who worked at The Los Angeles Times, wrote the story of Enrique as a series of features.

Enrique’s journey through Central America takes place along El Tren de la Muerte, or “the train of death.”

To illegally immigrate into the U.S., migrants must jump on and off moving boxcars on trains that run through Mexico.

“Students and faculty [who have read the book] alike have commented on the sheer determination that Enrique, and others like him, show in their efforts to ‘make it’ to the U.S.,” Ramsdell said in an e-mail. “Enrique, for example, has to make the journey nine times as he is repeatedly deported from Mexico to Guatemala. Finally, on his ninth attempt, he manages to cross the border into the U.S.”

Thousands of immigrant children looking for their parents make this journey every year, according to Nazario’s Web site.

“The most common comment I’ve heard is that, before reading the book, people didn’t realize how difficult the trip was or how desperate the immigrants are to come to the U.S.,” Ramsdell said. “The book, for them, gave the immigration debate a human face.”

Both Towson students and students of Baltimore County schools have been invited to the event.

“Enrique’s Journey” was made required reading for many incoming freshman in high schools and colleges across the country, according to Nazario’s Web site.

“I think that all college students should be interested in knowing not only about an issue of national and international significance, but also an issue that directly affects the people with whom they interact on a daily basis,” Ramsdell said in an e-mail.

Admission to the book talk is free, and will be followed by a reception and book signing.

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