Tickets for Everybody Reads 2025 on March 11 have officially sold out!
On March 11, in partnership with Multnomah County Library and The Library Foundation, Literary Arts will present Javier Zamora as the culminating event of Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads 2025 program.
This year’s program centers on Zamora’s memoir, Solito.
Solito chronicles Zamora’s 3,000-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border, where he would reunite with his parents.
In this interview with NPR, Zamora reads from his memoir, and reflects on his journey,
“Immediately, my fear makes me fast forward and skip my entire childhood. This 9-year-old who feels that he must get his act together so these adults don’t leave him because all these family members – all the adults that this kid has had in his life – have already left him. And I must behave, make myself small in the room so the adults don’t think I’m a pushover. That’s what my brain told me to do in order to survive…”
Javier Zamora: NPR; Solito – a CHild’s Story of Immigration
Beyond Solito, Zamora is a published Poet who first developed his love for poetry as a senior in high school when he was introduced to Chilean poet Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.
In this interview with CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, Zamora discusses the role of poetry in social movements and reads poems from his 2017 book Unaccompanied.
In 2018, Latino USA documented Zamora’s journey back to El Salvador after his TPS,(Temporary Protected Status), which allowed him to live and work in the United States, was suddenly threatened with revocation by the Trump Administration. Listen to the episode titled ‘The Return’ here.
Click here to find a list of 5 books that Zamora recommends to read after Solito.
