Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos

Title: Tell Us We're Home
Author: Marina Budhos
Published: May 2010
Pages: 297
Rating: 4/5
Synopsis: Jaya, Maria, and Lola are just like the other eighth-grade girls in the wealthy suburb of Meadowbrook, New Jersey. They want to go to the spring dance, they love spending time with their best friends after school, sharing frappés and complaining about the other kids. But there’s one big difference: all three are daughters of maids and nannies. And they go to school with the very same kids whose families their mothers work for.

That difference grows even bigger—and more painful—when Jaya’s mother is accused of theft and Jaya’s small, fragile world collapses. When tensions about immigrants start to erupt, fracturing this perfect, serene suburb, all three girls are tested, as outsiders—and as friends. Each of them must learn to find a place for themselves in a town that barely notices they exist.

Tell Us We're Home is a moving and thought-provoking story about the other side of the American dream. Marina Budhos gives us a heartbreaking and eye-opening story of friendship, belonging, and finding the way home.
 
Review: The lives of Jaya, Maria, and Lola are united by their mothers. They clean other peoples houses and babysit. They all feel left out of the town that they live in by their lack of money, that keeps them from being like the rest of them. Things get worse when suddenly their world gets even worse by the things that happen around them.

Jaya has come from Trinidad with her mother. She works cleaning the house of an old woman and is accused of stealing. Things are worse when her mother keeps losing her jobs. Jaya wants to help her but knows that she can't, since she has no power over others and none would ever take her seriously.

Maria came from Mexico and had to attend special classes so that she could learn English and later they wanted to change her accent. She lives with her mom in the basement of the house of her uncle, where their neighbors don't want them there. Maria wants to live a better life and gets involved with others who seem like they want to help but who may have other interests.

Lola is the rebellious one. She believes in things very deeply and isn't afraid to say what's in her mind. She loves learning about the revolutions and passionately believes that these are the people that others should look up to. She gets in trouble easily because of this but comes to terms that she has to change the way she reacts to things.

I enjoyed this book because it showed the hard lives that some people live day by day. They all wanted to fit in a world that they weren't used while their mothers were trying to give them a better future. It's an enjoyable book that I think may open some eyes to things around us.

Guest Post: Marina Budhos (Tell Us We're Home)

Today I have Marina Budhos, author of Tell Us We're Home stopping by the blog! I think this is something that affects everyone, not just those living in the U.S.

How do you think that immigrants from around the world are changing the U.S. and those that live here?

It used to be that we thought of the suburbs as all-American. You know, the white-picket fence, the yellow school busses, moms picking us up at the bus stop, families knowing each other from generations back. But all that’s changed. Immigrants are everywhere now—not just in cities, but in suburbs. And they are all kinds of immigrants, from doctors to men who wash cars. For instance, in Fairfax County, VA, a suburban area just outside Washington, D.C., some of the school districts have more students who speak a foreign language, and whose parents were born elsewhere, than American-born families. In one part of Denver, CO, the school district has gone from being working class whites to over 60 percent Hispanic.

But of course, when you have so much change, and so much diversity with immigrants, there’s bound to be frictions. Some states have grown openly hostile to immigrants. In Arizona, there was a controversial law enacted, allowing law enforcement officers to stop anyone who might look suspiciously like an undocumented immigrant. IIn Long Island there was a rash of “Mexican jumping”, one terrible incident leading to the death of a Latino day laborer. But there are other places such as Cook County, outside Chicago, where they pride themselves in being a ‘mosaic’ suburb, made up of so many different cultures.

The suburb I portray—Meadowbrook—is just on the cusp of that change. Most of the immigrants live on the fringes, in apartment houses, since this is an expensive place to live, or the commute in to work there. And they are the underpinning of the town—they cut the lawns and hedges, or serve as nannies and maids—they’re the invisible people that make suburban life possible.

What I hope is that all this change is opening the eyes of American teenagers. That they can see there other ways to be, other languages, other experiences that can enrich theirs. That it shows them they are part of a global world.

But that means getting used to a lot of changes, right on their street, right in their schools.
 
You can find Marina Budhos here:
-Website
-Goodreads
 
Here is the book trailer if you would like to know more about Tell Us We're Home.