Tell Us We're Home

If good young adult writing is all about voice - Marina Budhos' writerly voice is warm, approachable, humorous, and yet, insightful and critical as well. In "Tell Us We're Home," she tells the tale of three immigrant daughters - one South Asian, one Latina, and one Eastern European - in a wealthy New Jersey town. But while their classmates wear expensive clothing, and dabble in fair trade and social politics in between ultimate frisbee matches, Jaya, Lola and Maria's mothers are their classmates' housekeepers and babysitters. Together, the girls they negotiate the social minefields of immigrant identity, class politics, fashion, dating, and school dances. But when one of their mothers is accused of stealing, everything in their tautly held together worlds begins to unravel - including their precious friendship itself. For more, including an author interview: [...]

Tell Us We're Home offers a pitch-perfect view of a wealthy New York suburb famed for its diversity, yet far from successfully integrated. Each of the beautifully drawn teenage protagonists faces her own struggles, asks important questions, and begins moving towards answers as the book unfolds. Although Budhos doesn't sugar-coat their situation or the pain they experience, this is not a depressing book. Hopeful and wonderful.

I received a copy of TELL US WE'RE HOME from Atheneum/Simon & Schuster and couldn't wait to crack it open. The story is a twist on the usual teen girl friendship novel - in this tale, the protagonists are Jaya, Maria, and Lola, eighth-grade daughters of maids and nannies in an affluent New Jersey suburb. This is the paragraph that made my eyes sting: "Lola began to weep. This was it, the steely truth of her life. What she had been fighting ever since they'd come to America. This was a lonely land of firsts, where no one, not even your parents, could help you cross over. And she had no choice but to do it by herself . . . You pushed ahead, in the chilling rain, hoping you didn't die from being first." That paragraph resonated deeply for me. Maybe because I am one of those "firsts" and know the cutting truth of those words. But also maybe because it is true for so many who've landed on these shores as strangers in a strange land. Budhos touches on so many issues in this novel of social and personal awakening - the fallacy of the American dream, the myth of meritocracy, entitlement, class-based arrogance/ignorance, and xenophobia, just to start. The girls' relationship with one another is sweet, but I was most won over by the relationships between the mothers and daughters. All girls are either fatherless, or un-fathered (under-fathered?). The plight of single mothers carrying the full emotional and financial burden of raising their children in a new land that cuts them little to no slack is heart-breaking. Not to mention that these same women must often neglect their own children's needs to tend to the needs and whims of their employers' children (or parents, as the case may be). Budhos handles these issues with a light, deft touch. And everything is not wrapped up with a pretty bow at the end, either. It is left exactly as Life leaves things - untidy. But TELL US WE'RE HOME is a satisfying read for both teen readers and adults alike.

"And even deeper, she wanted to know Mrs. Harmon's secret: How do you feel like you belong? Do you have to live in a place for hundreds of years, your pale skin and wispy hair the same as those who came before? Do you need to know that the ground is sure beneath you?" TELL US WE'RE HOME by Marina Budhos is a devastating powerful story that quietly sliced me up and left me bleeding. I've experienced the discomfort of feeling like I don't belong. I don't know why certain kids seem to develop an inclination toward exclusion and seem determined to make sure others know that they don't belong. It's certainly not a universal thing: Other kids just as surely develop an inclination toward inclusion. I feel like some kids, even if they owned a forest, would still have a cow over any other kid picking up a fallen leaf. "That's from MY tree!" they'd scold. What causes a person to demand that walls are built to keep everyone else out; that not a cent of THEIR money go to anyone in need; that those who are different should stay away or go away? I know from reading history that those perceived as outsiders tend to get used as scapegoats and excuses for bigger troubles, and are targeted and blamed even more so than usual in times of economic stress. Like today: "But this year something was different in Meadowbrook, a feeling, an unease, an edge of chill eating away at the sweet, good spring days. Especially with so much going bad. FOR SALE signs were springing up like mushrooms after a rain. In the park all the nannies were talking about the layoffs and who'd gotten fired or had their hours cut back. The 'other side' of Haley Avenue was creeping up, salsa blaring from some shop where they sold international calling cards. Women in veils walking right past the old barber shop, now an African hair-braiding shop. "And then the sorest point: the day laborers, who waited every morning in the parking lot on Jessup Lane. Nobody liked how they looked -- caps pulled low over their eyes, hands pushed into their spattered dirty jeans, crushed Styrofoam cups and cigarette butts left on the asphalt..." TELL US WE'RE HOME is a contemporary middle school/younger-end YA novel that wildly succeeds on so many levels. It's a great tale of friendship between three eighth grade girls -- Jaya, Maria, and Lola. These three girls are members of immigrant families in which they each have parents who clean for and care for the kids of others in an upscale suburban New Jersey community. It is a story that incorporates details of the current economic crisis. It is a story of the American Dream in the Twenty-first century. It is a story about status and entitlement. It is a story that -- given the total absence of language and promiscuity -- could be taught in any middle school. (If there is even a kiss in the book, it's a parent's kiss good night.) TELL US WE'RE HOME reveals the stresses under which this trio of girlfriends lives as each girl's immigrant fam