However then in the summertime, Ave’s mother strikes to the USA for a brand new job on the College of Kansas, taking Ave and their little brother Ramon together with her. Ave’s father and older sister stay in Mexico.

Ave is aware of their mother and father are separating, however considers it to be solely momentary, and believes that their dad and sister will finally be a part of them within the U.S….even supposing any time Ave says one thing alongside these strains to a member of the family, we get a panel of that member of the family trying awkwardly to the facet and never saying something (due to this, readers will know this separation isn’t precisely momentary lengthy earlier than Ave will understand it).

That’s simply one of many many challenges Ave will face within the coming months.

Ave speaks very poor English and thus doesn’t strive very laborious to speak with anybody who doesn’t communicate Spanish. (All through the ebook, the dialogue of which is sort of completely introduced to readers in English, Pimienta distinguishes the languages with black lettering denoting Spanish and blue lettering for English.) In the meantime, their mom and brother undertake shortly, making new mates instantly—Ramon even desires to begin going by “Ray.”

Ave additionally worries about assimilating, not desirous to forsake their Mexican identification, which each act of becoming in—even talking English—appears to them to be main in direction of.

As laborious because the adjustment of the transfer, and the revelation of its permanency, is on Ave, issues get far simpler once they lastly begin faculty, and slowly, even reluctantly, make some new mates, mates who share some issues in frequent with them, like immigrant and/or non-traditional gender identities, or pursuits in operating and comics.

Pimienta’s Midway to Someplace isn’t nearly Ave’s journey from Mexico to Kansas, then, however their journey to accepting a brand new dwelling and a brand new familial established order and discovering a technique to be themself within the face of varied pressures on their identification.

Whereas the specifics of those conflicts may not be the very same for all of Pimienta’s readers, they need to nonetheless resonate, as they faucet into broader emotions that come up with coping with change and combating identification that each one youngsters should undergo as they start their very own journeys from childhood to maturity.

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