Weaving together narrative essay and bilingual poetry, Knitting the Fog is the complex self-portrait of a young Chapina girl who wakes up to find her mother gone. When her mother returns three years later, they begin a month-long journey to El Norte. Once settled in California, Claudia has trouble assimilating-she doesn't speak English, and her Spanish is "weird"-but when back in Guatemala, she is startled to find she no longer belongs there either. A harrowing story told with the candid innocence of childhood, Hernández's memoir depicts the struggle and resilience inherent to immigration today.
"Part-torch song and part-excavation: a hybrid book of short nonfiction interlaced with poems that mirror the turbulent fog one must survive when they are a child who must keep going, despite it all. It is also a book of our times, a story of struggle and resilience, a warrior song that refuses to look or run away."
Melissa R. Sipin, TAYO editor in chief
"Knitting the Fog brings us the immigrant experience in a refreshingly new light. This memoir of hybrid forms-moving evocatively between poetry and prose-is not only timely but resonant in sense of place and purpose. How exciting that Hernández's voice joins the canon of contemporary Latina stories."
