Tell Me How It Ends

An Essay in 40 Questions

By: Valeria Luiselli

Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard

A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the US.

Structured around the forty questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation, Tell Me How It Ends (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman's essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear-both here and back home.


"Humane yet often horrifying, Tell Me How It Ends offers a compelling, intimate look at a continuing crisis-and its ongoing cost in an age of increasing urgency." -Jeremy Garber, Powell's Books

"Valeria Luiselli's extended essay on her volunteer work translating for child immigrants confronts with compassion and honesty the problem of the North American refugee crisis. It's a rare thing: a book everyone should read." -Stephen Sparks, Point Reyes Books

"Tell Me How It Ends evokes empathy as it educates. It is a vital contribution to the body of post-Trump work being published in early 2017." -Katharine Solheim, Unabridged Bookstore

"While this essay is brilliant for exactly what it depicts, it helps open larger questions, which we're ever more on the precipice of now, of where all of this will go, how all of this might end. Is this a story, or is this beyond a story? Valeria Luiselli is one of those brave and eloquent enough to help us see." -Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company

"Appealing to the language of the United States' fraught immigration policy, Luiselli exposes the cracks in this foundation. Herself an immigrant, she highlights the human cost of its brokenness, as well as the hope that it (rather than walls) might be rebuilt." -Brad Johnson, Diesel Bookstore

"The bureaucratic labyrinth of immigration, the dangers of searching for a better life, all of this and more is contained in this brief and profound work. Tell Me How It Ends is not just relevant, it's essential." -Mark Haber, Brazos Bookstore

educate yourself

full of important information. it's a must read (and share) to open up our eyes on immigration issues that concern us all. it's also great for developing more empathy.

Timely and Important Essay

I found this essay an important one to read to become better informed about the immigration situation. I read it alongside the author's fictionalized version, Lost Children Archive.

Immigration Comes to Life!

The author provides many examples of how complicated our immigration laws are for children.

The storytelling that goes beyond the facts.

This book does an incredible job at explaining and describing the immigration system beyond legal terms and facts. It humanizes the people who are impacted by the system and immerses you into the process.

One-sided Sympathy Pull

This is a shallow book on the sympathetic arguments aimed at advocating for a loose immigration policy. Written from the perspective of a translator who admittedly changes the translations from the immigrant to the court / lawyers, the book is completely absent in its presentation of the quantity of migrants, the difficulties in assimilating migrants, the constraints of our USA capacity to hold and care for migrants, and so much more. Moreover, its contradictory as the author apparently respects the USA rules as it relates to her own personal legal status but rejects it, or certainly does not support it, as it relates to the path, rules, court procedures, and uncertain status of child, and supposedly other, migrants. The author is clearly an activist who never once tries to solve the problem at its source country, but rather she blames the USA for even the source-country issues leading to the children migrating (specifically, USA drug use, past immigration law reforms, aid). Note to author: We all care about the migrant kids, but there is so much more to the challenge than that. This book would have been more effective if it shared its story inside of a bigger story which has to do with various quantifications on how our culture can integrate other lesser-educated culture(s) while simultaneously maintaining our own identity, educational levels, fairness as it relates to legal migration and more. The story aside, this book is well performed.