2025 Falmouth Reads Together
Falmouth Reads Together 2025:
Solito: A Memoir by Javier Zamora
Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago—“one day, you’ll
take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.”
Javier Zamora’s adventure is a 3,000-mile journey from his small town in
El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border.
He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a
mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling
alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito provides an immediate and
intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey,
but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most
unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story
of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home.
“I read Solito with my heart in my throat and did not burst into tears until the last sentence. What a person, what a writer, what a book.”—Emma Straub
Request a copy of Solito today via CLAMS
Events related to this year’s Town Read!
- March 15 at 2:00 PM: What’s Next for the Border? – A presentation by Miriam Davidson
Miriam Davidson is a Tucson-based writer whose work focuses on border issues. Her most recent book, The Beloved Border: Humanity and Hope in a Contested Land, tells powerful stories of atrocities and compassion at the southern border. Davidson’s presentation will focus on the history of migration at the border, placing the Falmouth Reads Together selection, Solito, in both historical and contemporary context. She will also share accounts of what life is like south of the border, crossing the Darién Gap and cartel violence in Mexico. As well as discussing the environmental and cultural damage from the border wall and mine construction.
Her award-winning journalism has appeared in the New York Times, the AARP Bulletin, the Arizona Republic, the Nation, the Progressive, and many other outlets. She attended Yale College and the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
- March 20 at 5:00 PM: Author Interview Screening and Discussion
On Childhood Migration from Central America–In Conversation with Javier Zamora
The West Falmouth Library will screen an author interview with Javier Zamora that was previously recorded by the Library Speakers Consortium
Tune in for a special conversation with New York Times bestselling author Javier Zamora as he chats with us about his riveting tale of survival and perseverance as told in his award-winning memoir Solito.
Zamora’s adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” hired to lead them to safety, Javier expects his trip to last two short weeks.
At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents’ arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside fellow migrants who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family.
Solito provides an immediate and intimate account not only of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also of the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier Zamora’s story, but it’s also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home. Register today to learn more about this gripping and moving story!
About the Author: Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. His father fled the country when he was one, and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents’ migrations were caused by the U.S.-funded Salvadoran Civil War. When he was nine Javier migrated through Guatemala, Mexico, and the Sonoran Desert. His debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the war and immigration on his family. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard and holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.
- Friday, April 4th at 7:00 PM in the Hermann Room: Documentary Screening
Screening of the 2019 documentary Change the Subject
The power of words is incalculable. While researching immigration, a Dartmouth College student kept encountering the term “Illegal aliens” as a library subject heading. As a person who had grown up undocumented in Georgia, she was disturbed by this institutionalized form of a racial slur. And so she did something about it: she and other students joined librarians in petitioning the Library of Congress to change its terminology. Change the Subject tells the story of these students, whose singular effort at confronting an instance of anti-immigrant sentiment in their library catalog took them all the way from Baker-Berry Library to the halls of Congress. This film shows how an instance of campus activism entered the national spotlight, and how a cataloging term became a flashpoint in the immigration debate on Capitol Hill.
Librarian Jill Baron and filmmaker Sawyer Broadley co-directed the film, with significant collaboration from co-producers Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares and Melissa Padilla. While the narrative driving the film is of the activism of students and librarians around a Library of Congress subject heading, the film extends into a meditation on the ways that language is often weaponized to divide and dehumanize people.
Falmouth Reads Together will host a screening of Change the Subject with a panel discussion afterwards with film director, Sawyer Broadley and co-producer Óscar Rubén Cornejo Cásares.
D: Jill Baron & Sawyer Broadley ’08, US, 2019, 1hr
YouTube Trailer: https://youtu.be/Ebphd5Rg6c8
- February 1 – March 31st: The Bay State: A Multicultural Landscape Photographic Exhibit
The Bay State: A Multicultural Landscape photographic exhibit will be on display in the Adult Collections Room for the public to view. This exhibit is free to the public and is a Falmouth Reads Together 2025 event.
The library’s exhibit is a selection of images from the original exhibit that has been displayed in over 100 libraries and venues since 2015.
The Bay State: A Multicultural Landscape is a moving and powerful exhibit of a selection from a selection of 300 newly naturalized U.S. citizens who are residents of the Commonwealth. These inspirational photographic portraits create a visual archive celebrating the diversity of Massachusetts’ citizens from 160 countries around the globe. A multicultural landscape enriches the viewer by sharing the vast cultural resources and rich ethnic heritage of the Bay State’s 351 towns and cities.
Photographer Mark Chester became curious about America’s newest citizen and the countries represented in Massachusetts. His curiosity and his desire to photograph this community of residents led to the creation of the non-profit Cultural Diversity in Massachusetts Project, endorsed by MIRA – the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy coalition. Read more about Mark Chester here.
