Join the Modern Latina Book Club as we explore Isabel Allende’s latest book The Wind Knows My Name. The book shares the story of the lives of a Jewish boy escaping Nazi-occupied Europe and a mother and daughter fleeing twenty-first-century El Salvador intersect in this ambitious, intricate novel about war and immigration.
In the author’s notes Isabel shares where this new story begins. After seeing a performance of Kindertransport, a play by Diane Samuels based on the true events of children saved from Nazi-controlled territory by organized rescue efforts. The protagonist is a Jewish girl who is sent to England by her parents to save her from the Nazi concentration camps. The heartbreaking decision of those desperate parents to send away their daughter and the trauma that it caused them and the child have haunted me for years. It’s a life-and-death choice that no parent should ever have to make. What happened to those displaced kids? Some were received by kind families, others were met with indifference, some were exploited or abused—but they all grew up with holes in their hearts.
As a mother and a grandmother, I feel the pain of those families seared in my bones. After reading and watching movies and documentaries about the Kindertransport and listening to some interviews of the survivors, I started researching other instances in which children have been separated from their parents, like the Black children sold into slavery, or the Indigenous children taken away from their families to be “civilized” in brutal boarding schools in the United States, Canada, Australia, and other places, or the babies taken away from single mothers to be given into adoption in Ireland. I discovered that this tragedy has been happening for a very long time and it happens in places that are allegedly safe havens. In 2017, the press reported about the systematic separation of children from their families at the United States’ southern border. We learned of screaming children dragged away by border patrol offi cers, even breastfeeding babies ripped from their mother’s arms. We saw harrowing photos of children in cages and the shameful conditions of minors in detention centers. It was a government policy aimed at discouraging asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants.
For the background of this book Isabel interviewed extraordinary people who work tirelessly to alleviate the refugees’ plight, like lawyers who represent children pro bono, social workers, psychologists, and thousands of volunteers moved by compassion and decency.
Synopsis
Vienna, 1938. Samuel Adler is five years old when his father disappears during Kristallnacht—the night his family loses everything. As her child’s safety becomes ever harder to guarantee, Samuel’s mother secures a spot for him on a Kindertransport train out of Nazi-occupied Austria to England. He boards alone, carrying nothing but a change of clothes and his violin.
Arizona, 2019. Eight decades later, Anita Díaz and her mother board another train, fleeing looming danger in El Salvador and seeking refuge in the United States. But their arrival coincides with the new family separation policy, and seven-year-old Anita finds herself alone at a camp in Nogales. She escapes her tenuous reality through her trips to Azabahar, a magical world of the imagination. Meanwhile, Selena Durán, a young social worker, enlists the help of a successful lawyer in hopes of tracking down Anita’s mother.
Intertwining past and present, The Wind Knows My Name tells the tale of these two unforgettable characters, both in search of family and home. It is both a testament to the sacrifices that parents make and a love letter to the children who survive the most unfathomable dangers—and never stop dreaming.