In his 2022 memoir, poet Javier Zamora vividly depicts his epic journey from his small Salvadoran hometown to the U.S. when he was just nine years old.

In his 2022 memoir Solito, poet Javier Zamora brings to life his uncertain and terrifying 3,000-mile odyssey from a Salvadoran fishing village to the U.S. when he was just nine.

Javier Zamora is a Salvadoran-American poet. He has written multiple collections of poetry about immigration and his family. His first, Unaccompanied, was a poetic precursor to his memoir.

Zamora's parents had made it to the U.S. years before him, and his family could only pay for him to complete the trip alone, unaccompanied by a family member. Solito describes in striking detail how his journey went wrong.