Just Like Us cover art

Just Like Us

The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America

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About this listen

Just Like Us tells the story of four high-school students whose parents entered this country illegally from Mexico. All four of the girls have grown up in the United States, and all four want to live the American dream, but only two have documents. As the girls attempt to make it into college, they discover that only the legal pair see a clear path forward.

A coming-of-age story about girlhood and friendship, as well as the resilience required to transcend poverty, Just Like Us is also a book about identity. The girls, their families, and the critics who object to their presence allow the reader to watch one of the most complicated social issues of our times unfurl in a major American city.

©2009 Helen Thorpe (P)2011 Dreamscape Media, LLC Americas Emigration & Immigration Social Sciences

Critic reviews

"An excellent, in-depth study of immigration policies gone amok." ( Library Journal)
" Just Like Us beautifully and powerfully reminds us of the individuals whose lives lie at the center of the chaos that is our approach to immigration. Helen Thorpe has taken policy and turned it in to literature." (Malcolm Gladwell)
"With a gaze that is tender and ever alert, Helen Thorpe follows the lives of four young women - Mexican and American - so alike in their coming-of-age, but separated by the ironies of geography, the border that cuts through the heart." (Richard Rodriguez, author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America)
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