Javier Zamora’s Solito is told entirely from the perspective of a nine-year-old child dealing with the harsh reality that many face when crossing the border– specifically from the country of El Salvador. His choice of narration is an interesting one because it is something we do not often see in autobiographies. Typically, authors will write from an older, wiser perspective that allows them to look back at their past and therefore reflect on it. Zamora steers away from this tactic for a number of reasons, one of which being his representation of embodiment, and how it ultimately relates to dealing with his trauma as an adult.

Proximity of El Salvador to USA

Through much of his narration, Zamora uses the idea of embodiment to show how his traumatic memories are felt physically. Because he is so young at the time of the events (and because it is told from that specific perspective) Zamora leaves out much of his intellectual thoughts about this trauma he endured and reflected on later in life. Instead, he seems to draw attention to the direct impact much of this journey has on his physical body. He describes the sweat on his hands when the immigration police enter the bus, a true telling of an immediate trauma response. Once ordered to leave the bus, he says, “All of our arms behind our heads, in a line, on the dirt that hurts my knees. I try to scoot away from a rock pressing into my right shin. The sun warms up my hair. The back of my neck. My hands. I’m still wearing the light jacket. The dry air on my face, the heat–” (124). Trauma often leaves us with many scars aside from the emotional ones, and this might have been the only way for a nine year old to articulate these specific feelings. Zamora’s description of trauma helps to remind the reader that events like this one won’t just disrupt thoughts and emotions, but will also disrupt the inhabitation of the physical body.

“All of our arms behind our heads, in a line, on the dirt that hurts my knees. I try to scoot away from a rock pressing into my right shin. The sun warms up my hair. The back of my neck. My hands. I’m still wearing the light jacket. The dry air on my face, the heat–” (124).

The text entitled “Reading Autobiography Now” touches on how skin and the way it is recognized in the world can often decide how, when, and why the body becomes “visible.” In Zamora’s case, it seems to be in these moments (like the bus ride), when his identity is questioned by the outside world (because of background and ethnicity), that he essentially becomes “visible.” This can be seen as a source of the trauma he faced emotionally as he continued to grow up.

Zamora being interviewed about “Solito” and his adulthood

Writing this from such a young perspective gives the audience very little insight as to how Zamora has dealt with this tough reality throughout adulthood. In September of 2022, Zamora was featured in a Today news article, where he spoke about much of his twenties and his eventual time in therapy. He describe feelings of extreme isolation amongst his peers, and would often find himself not opening up about his journey because he feared no one could possibly understand what he went through. Zamora said that when he originally tried to recount his journey, he sought out drugs and alcohol because the memories were too much for him to deal with. He then decided to pursue what “Reading Autobiography Now” would refer to as a “somatic practice.” He started seeing his therapist, Caro, in 2019. Caro was the first therapist who was also a Latin American immigrant herself, so Zamora finally felt understood. Zamora also mentions that he feels very fortunate that writing is in fact a form of therapy for him. He writes, “My job has become my own healing and that is a rare thing. I feel very fortunate to heal in a public way, in the hopes that my own journey will inspire others to face their traumas with the aid of professionals and loved ones who can hold our ugly cries, our anger, our resentment, our fear, our shame, our aching muscles.”

Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson discuss how therapy is an important form of somatic therapy that is relevant to embodiment and trauma. They say, “The path to healing, Van der Kolk argues, needs to be routed through attention to bodily responses and the healing potential the body makes available to sufferers. (86). Zamora mentioned that through weekly intensive therapy sessions, he was finally able to relive his journey without thinking about his life up until this point. After diving into his journey, he felt that he could see why he was making what he describes as horrible decisions throughout his teens and twenties.

Although the autobiography Zamora wrote was entirely told from the perspective of a very young boy, the reader is able to develop the sense of the trauma he embodied throughout the journey. Looking into his decisions as an adult, it is clear that this traumatic event had huge effects on him. But, his ability to write this book shows that he is healing through different mechanisms, and ultimately wants people with similar struggles to understand that they are not alone.