Spring Author Series: Helen Thorpe
Spend an evening at the library with author and journalist Helen Thorpe. This community talk is free.
|About the author
Helen Thorpe lives in Denver and works as a freelance journalist. Her magazine stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York, George and 5280. Her radio stories have aired on This American Life and Soundprint. She has worked as a staff writer for The New York Observer; The New Yorker, where she wrote “Talk of the Town” stories; and Texas Monthly. Thorpe is married to John Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado, and they have one son. She currently serves on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. Just Like Us is her first book.
Photograph by Andrew Clark: www.andrewclarkphotography.com.
Read interviews with Thorpe and more about her book on her web site here.
Read an interesting profile of Helen Thorpe that was published in 5280 magazine.
Reading List 
Just Like Us is a powerful and moving account of four young women from Mexico who have lived most of their lives in the United States and attend the same high school. Two of them have legal documentation and two do not. Just Like Us is their story.
A stunning work of in-depth journalism, Just Like Us takes us deep into an American subculture – that of Mexican immigrants – largely hidden from the mainstream. We meet four girls on the eve of their senior prom, in Denver. Each is bright, ambitious, and an excellent student. Their leader, Marisela, dazzles teachers during the day, and spends her evenings checking groceries to help pay the bills. She dreams of college and a professional career – but she doesn’t have a green card or a Social Security number, because her parents brought her across the border illegally.
Marisela’s best friend, Yadira, shares her predicament. But they spend all of their time with two girls who are legal – Elissa, who was born in the United States, and Clara, who has a green card. Each of the girls views the others as her equals, yet the world does not treat them that way. Their situation becomes increasingly painful and complex as the four young women approach adulthood, and Marisela and Yadira watch their two legal friends gain opportunities that are not available to them. All four hold American aspirations, but only Clara and Elissa have the documents necessary to realize those hopes. Their friendships start to divide along lines of immigration status.
Then a political firestorm begins. An illegal immigrant commits a horrendous crime in Denver, and a local Congressman seizes on the act as proof of all that is wrong with American society. Arguments over immigration rage fiercely, and the rest of the girls’ lives play out against a backdrop of intense debate over whether they have any right to live in the country where they have grown up.
This brilliant, fast-paced work of narrative journalism is a vivid coming-of-age story about girlhood, friendship, and, most of all, identity – what it means to fake an identity, steal an identity, or inherit an identity from one’s parents and country. No matter what one’s opinions are about immigration, Just Like Us offers fascinating insight into one of our most complicated social issues today. The girls, their families, those who welcome them, and those who object to their presence all must grapple with the same deep dilemma: Who is an American? Who gets to live in America? And what happens when we don’t agree?
About the Spring Author Series at BWML
Bud Werner Memorial Library presents a series of free author talks throughout spring 2012. We proudly welcome C.J. Box (March 8), Craig Childs (April 5) and Helen Thorpe (May 11) into our library, and our community. Each of these diverse award-winning authors will speak about their literary works and their writing processes during a talk in Library Hall. Each talk will be followed by a Q&A and an opportunity to have authors sign copies of their books.
Books will be for sale on-site at the event courtesy of Off the Beaten Path Bookstore.