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Solidarity Stories: "Infinite Country"

Join the Mount Rainier Branch Library and Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights for our monthly book club! This month we hope you can join us as we discuss "Infinite Country" by Patricia Engel.

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia’s parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro’s deportation and the family’s splintering—the costs they’ve all been living with ever since. Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country “is as much an all-American story as it is a global one” ~Booklist, starred review.

Borrow the book from PGCMLS: Print | Audiobook CD | Large Print

The Solidarity Stories: Community - Led Book Discussion takes place the 3rd Tuesday of each month in the upstairs lounge area of Mixt Food Hall in Brentwood, MD. Limited parking is available via the garage on 39th Street and Rhode Island Ave. Parking is free for program participants and no purchase is required, but participants are welcome to order snacks, drinks, or dinner from Mixt’s vendors. For more information, visit their website: https://mixtfoodhall.com