We Are Not from Here

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Pulga’s Backpack

Pulga does not have much to put into his backpack when he leaves home besides a change of clothing and his Walkman with his father’s mixtape. Those articles are a strong representation of the home he is leaving behind, as is the emptiness of the backpack itself; it symbolizes the unfulfilled life Pulga faces in Guatemala. In this way the backpack is a symbol that contributes to themes of family and home. Pulga travels the duration of his long and traumatic trip to the border with the backpack, losing it only when he is sent to the migrant detention center, where he must exchange it for a random number, suggesting the dehumanizing effects of the detention center. When he is released to the guardianship of his father’s sister, he reclaims the backpack, noting with complete sincerity to the guard’s snide remark that the backpack does indeed represent his whole life. He carries t life his old life with him as he leaves with his aunt, and may be ready to fill it with new things after he recovers.

La Bestia

La Bestia, the Beast, is both the train itself that carries migrants as well as the route that they follow; it is both helpful and potentially deadly. Sanchez animates the train effectively in the novel: It screeches and howls, runs slow and fast, sometimes sleeps for hours before awakening to rumble and move again. In the scene in which the train does not slow enough for Pulga and Pequeña to board it, it “is going so fast, like it wants to kill us. Like it wasn’t to remind us that it is a beast, a demon, a thing that passes through hell” (258). Yet when they reach the end of the train route, having ridden La Bestia as far as they can, Pequeña feels as much gratitude as she does horror and anger toward La Bestia. They and so many other migrants were moved to take the risk of riding due to the danger and fear that impelled them to leave home; desperation forces them to board again and again on the hope that the train might deliver them to the end of its line.

Religious Imagery

Details pertaining to God and religion along with religious iconography and imagery form a motif throughout the novel that serve to both accompany and juxtapose with instances of the supernatural. For example, Pequeña is certain she is looking at God in the hand of a mother helping her child to drink rainwater atop the train; she sees ghosts in the desert of those who did not survive the trip; and she is used to thinking of La Bruja as both a witch and an angel. Other instances include the priests and the nun who help migrants along their journey; praying at a painted image of the Virgin Mother the night after they sleep in a graveyard; the choice to board and use La Bestia’s “hell route.” The name of the town just before crossing the desert is Altar, calling to mind a holy sacrifice or place of worship; Pequeña lights a candle in Altar and accepts a blessing from the nun there.