Author Valeria Luiselli began working as a volunteer interpreter at New York’s federal immigration court in 2015. She has since heard many disturbing accounts of unaccompanied children travelling through her home country,Mexico“Why did you near to the United States?” That’s the first question on the intake questionnaire for unaccompanied child migrants. The questionnaire is used in the federal immigration court in New York City, where I started working as a volunteer interpreter in 2015. My task there is a simple one: I interview children, and following the intake questionnaire,and then translate their stories from Spanish to English.
But nothing is ever that simple. I hear words spoken in the mouths of children, threaded in complex narratives. They are delivered with hesitance, and sometimes distrust,always with awe. I contain to transform them into written words, succinct sentences and barren terms. But the children’s stories are always shattered beyond the repair of a narrative order. The problem with trying to declare their anecdote is that it has no beginning, and no middle,and no end ...
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Source: guardian.co.uk