Jennifer De Leon
Jennifer De Leon is author of the YA novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (Simon & Schuster, 2020) which was chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection, and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing (UMass Press, 2021), which is a recipient of the Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She is also the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), an anthology that won an International Latino Book Award. An Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and faculty member in the Creative Writing & Literature Master Program at Harvard University, she has published prose in over a dozen literary journals including Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and more. Jenn makes her home outside the Boston area with her husband and two sons. Her next YA novel, Borderless, is forthcoming in February 2023.
Borderless
Jennifer De Leon
Caught in the crosshairs of gang violence, a teen girl and her mother set off on a perilous journey from Guatemala City to the US border in this “engrossing” ( Kirkus Reviews ) young adult novel from the author of Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From .
For seventeen-year-old Maya, trashion is her passion, and her talent for making clothing out of unusual objects landed her a scholarship to Guatemala City’s most prestigious design school and a finalist spot in the school’s fashion show. Mamá is her biggest supporter, taking on extra jobs to pay for what the scholarship doesn’t cover, and she might be even more excited than Maya about what the fashion show could do for her future career.
So when Mamá doesn’t come to the show, Maya doesn’t know what to think. But the truth is worse than she could have imagined. The gang threats in their neighborhood have walked in their front door—with a boy Maya considered a friend, or maybe even more, among them. After barely making their escape, Maya and her mom have no choice but to continue their desperate flight all the way through Guatemala and Mexico in hopes of crossing the US border.
They have to cross. They must cross! Can they?
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