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Valeria Luiselli uses the art of storytelling to urge readers to acknowledge the stories of migrants through defamiliarization and fragmentation. This inspired me to research and learn about their stories, and try to find patterns within the stories, in an effort to understand why Luiselli wants their stories told. Readers can understand that Valeria Luiselli wrote Lost Children Archive in an attempt to tell the stories of the people that have been forgotten throughout history. The family is on a road trip to a destination so Pa can record the sounds of people that have been forgotten by history. The actual story in the book is about trying to remember those who have been forgotten, but there is also an underlying story about people that have been forgotten: migrants. Pa says on page 26 that he wants to go to the Chiricahua Mountains and record their sounds because the Apache people “were the last of something” (Luiselli 26). He wants them to be remembered for being the last Native tribe to resist colonization, and does not want their efforts for independence to be forgotten. Similarly, I believe Valeria Luiselli wrote Lost Children Archive to persuade people to remember and acknowledge those who fought and lost their lives trying to find independence and safety away from their country.

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There is a website of an organization that provides assistance to people who have lost contact with a migrant. The website provides resources and organizations to contact to try to find information regarding their missing loved one. This website also provides records of deaths of people that were trying to migrate, as well as data and statistics about migrant mortality.

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Link to the website mentioned in paragraph 2

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Link to the website mentioned in paragraph 2

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Missing Migrants Project data are estimates from IOM, national authorities and media sources. The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on maps do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by IOM.

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The Missing Migrants website presents that 9,239 people have been reported as a Missing Migrant in the years since 2014, in the Americas alone. The website reports incidents of dead migrants found, with information about them. The information provided includes the date of the incident, where the migrant likely came from and where they were likely going, the location of the death, and the likely cause of death. There is almost no information on the actual person: name, age, sex, anything. People are used to looking at death as the death of a person, not just a death, like presented here. The data does not allow for one to mourn a person, because there is no indication as to who this person was.

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While it is extremely morbid, the defamiliarization of this then links back to the elegies within the book. The readers follow along this journey of migrants riding La Bestia but no names are ever mentioned in these elegies. Deaths of these migrants are voiced, but in a way that it is hard to understand who died, because there was never really introductions.

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Furthermore, the lack of names within the four main characters is similar. It defamiliarizes readers, because everyone is used to knowing the other person's name within a minute of an interaction. The defamiliarization of no true identification makes readers think deeper about life and interactions. It makes readers think about the amount of people that interact on a daily basis, and how it is normal to know thousands of names. This then makes readers realize how weird it is to not know the names of the main characters in the book, and the names of the majority of the secondary characters. By doing this, Luiselli is able to employ defamiliarization and pathos to encourage readers to take a deeper look into the identity of people.

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Additionally, there is another website that marks migrant deaths on a map, and creates a spreadsheet of information for each death. I looked into the reports from the month of February 2024, the month I read the Lost Children Archive. Some of the reports have specifics: name, age, sex. However, most of the reports have the same information: completely unidentified. The most information given for each of these vague reports is the coordinates of where the body was found, and the corridor the person likely took from Mexico into the USA. The lack of identification furthers Luiselli’s argument that history has a habit of forcing fragmentation onto people. This fragmentation takes away from a person’s identity, forcing them to be pieces of themselves, like the coordinates of their death or the corridor they took in an attempt for refuge. People are being diminished to a 14-line report that indicates their death, not them as a person.

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Link to website mentioned in paragraph 6

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Link to website mentioned in paragraph 6

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In partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office, we have created an updated migrant death map, formally known as the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants. The map is searchable. Viewers may see the exact location where each migrant body has been found, along other information, such as the name and gender of the deceased (if known and if the family has been notified), date of discovery, and cause of death.

Medical examiners in Pima and Maricopa Counties determine which recovered remains are Undocumented Border Crossers (deceased migrants.) Arizona's border with Mexico is approximately 400 miles long, and migrants' remains have been discovered as far as 75 miles north of Arizona's border with Mexico. Due to the vastness of the territory and the millions of acres of desolate desert that migrants traverse, the sad reality is that a substantial percentage of human remains will never be recovered. It's especially heartrending to note that, according to medical examiners, as of December 31, 2018, over 1000 decedents remain unidentified.

Lastly, we would have readers understand that many sets of human remains most recently recovered are in fact those of persons who died in the desert anywhere from a year to many years ago. The answer to the question of the age of human remains can be viewed under the column "Post Mortem Interval" when looking at the data given with the "Map of Migrant Mortality."

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In partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiner's Office, we have created an updated migrant death map, formally known as the Arizona OpenGIS Initiative for Deceased Migrants. The map is searchable.

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The fragmentation ties into Luiselli’s argument that history forces people to lose their identity in an effort to get more information out. Deaths become statistics and people get forgotten about. By depicting this in the novel, Luiselli is able to draw attention to this and encourage readers to reflect on the pieces of others they see. There is a lot of fragmentation in the identities of the main characters through the book: how they care for others, their taste in music, niche interests, how they spend their time. This fragmentation is odd to see here because it is also reflected in the elegies. The characters in these elegies are never described in full, but readers are allowed pieces of their identities: how they care for others on La Bestia, how they spend their time off the train, who is waiting for them on the other side of the border, etc. The fragmentation in each of the stories reflects each other.

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Lastly, there is fragmentation in the migrant mortality reports Luiselli provides (pages 244-249) but also the reports the websites I found provide. They each show very specific and small pieces of information on the deceased: the coordinates of their body, the corridor they took, who found them, and where they were likely going. Almost none of the reports have any information about the person themselves. It is harsh to see a person's life diluted to pieces of their death. I believe this is another way Luiselli tries to convince her readers to look deeper into the stories of migrants and remember those who have been forgotten, to see these people as whole and not just pieces.

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Document with migrant mortality reports from February 2024 

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Document with migrant mortality reports from February 2024 