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"Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America"

By Rich Fisher

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kwgs/local-kwgs-891250.mp3

Tulsa, Oklahoma – On this installment of StudioTulsa, we speak with Helen Thorpe about her timely and well-written new book, "Just Like Us: The True Story of Four Mexican Girls Coming of Age in America." This book offers a moving account of four young women from Mexico who've all lived most of their lives in the United States, and who've all attended the same high school in Colorado. Here's the catch --- two of them have legal documentation, and two do not. "Just Like Us" thus gives readers a thorough "insider's perspective" on the matter of immigration (both legal and illegal) in our country today. As one writer (in the pages of The Washington Post) has noted of this volume: "Thorpe, a veteran reporter, brings a journalist's eye to her story. Her narrative is quick-paced and full of incident and clamor [as] she goes across the border to bang around in trucks and cough in the dust clouds. Yet her attention to ambience and detail lends a vibe that is enriched by her empathy. . . . Both the journey and the destination haunt the book, and the United States can seem as alien as the distant landscapes from which the immigrants have come. Rather than finding this whole scene enervating, Thorpe finds it exhilarating."