BASS 2018 finally hits an off note: "Everything is Far from Here" by Cristina Henriquez

Back when I started blogging my way through the 2018 Best American Short Stories anthology, I was thinking I'd be doing at least a few scathing reviews. But for the first nine stories, I had to stretch pretty far to find anything at all to object to. There were none I really disliked, and at least three I thought were brilliant. Nearly halfway through the anthology, I was worried I was sounding like a shill, and that my integrity as a reviewer would be in question.

Finally, on the anthology's tenth story, I got one I don't like, but I absolutely do not have the heart to go much into why. How do I dump on a story about an immigrant who's been through hell, when the story is based on the real lives of so many people? Nothing in me wants to criticize this story.

And yet, it doesn't really work for me. I think it just didn't do anything that hasn't already been done. (Says the writer who has published his own stories about  the harrowing journeys of migrants.) It's telling us a story we kind of already know, and I don't feel like what's new about it is significant enough to make much of a difference. It's not going to change the minds of the people who carry signs that say "Illegal is a crime" or "Send them back with birth control," as Henriquez's story has it. And the people likely to find the unnamed main character sympathetic are already sympathetic to those running from hell to hell.

Kurt Vonnegut wrote what I think is the greatest book on World War II, the book that comes closest to expressing the insanity that engulfed the human race (Slaughter-House Five). But it took him decades to do it. It was the first book he tried to write, but he kept failing at it. He didn't get it right until he'd had time to distance himself from the events and many other novels to learn from. I think this short story hits me like what Vonnegut's early failures must have been like. I'm sure Vonnegut's failure was still excellent, because it's Vonnegut. Henriquez's story isn't bad. It just isn't really new ground. It isn't the story that really nails the essence of the border on big and small levels. I feel like both the New Yorker, who published it to begin with, and the BASS anthology chose it because it seems like immigration and the border ought to appear SOMEWHERE in American literature about now. They're too important to be absent, it seems. But this just isn't the powerful story they seem to feel it is. I saw this movie twenty-five years ago. The political landscape has changed since then, but the human drama is pretty similar. It was awful then and it's awful now.

That's all the criticism I have the heart to offer, which makes this a pretty weak review. Something just feels wrong about shitting on a story about this topic. Even though I didn't feel like it hit it in the sweet spot, any attempt to get readers to connect with the human side of the border seems like it's worth trying. Criticizing this story too much feels like telling the neighbor who brought you lasagna when your dog died that it needed more oregano.

Quick note for students: I know that a lot of the folks who read these reviews are students who get assigned these stories for class. Be careful when reading this story. The main character is separated from her son, but this story was written before the current policy of arresting and trying illegal immigrants as criminals--the one that has led to widespread separation of children from their parents--began. That policy began in spring 2018. This story was written in 2016 or 2017 and published in 2017. The separation in the story happened because the coyote (the person hired to bring the migrants into the U.S.) split up the women from the men and children. It can be very difficult to get an unbiased view of what the government is actually doing, but this write-up by factcheck.org seems about as impartial as you're likely to get.

For Karen Carlson's take on this story (which is not that off from mine), click here.