Publishers Weekly
07/27/2020
Salvadoran-American journalist Lovato recounts in this anguished memoir his 2015 trip to El Salvador to investigate the country’s horrific gang wars. Along the way, he visits mass graves, and speaks with a gang chieftain enamored of the Hunger Games novels and a police official who hints at extrajudicial executions of gang suspects. In Lovato’s telling, the carnage is an American tragedy: El Salvador’s current gangs were founded in California by refugees from the country’s civil war in the 1980s, in which thousands of civilians were killed by the U.S.-backed military and right-wing death squads battling FMLN insurgents. It’s also a personal story as he revisits his work with the FMLN and a love affair with a traveling companion. He weaves in the troubled saga of his father, who as a boy in 1932 witnessed La Matanza, a massacre of thousands of Salvadoran peasants and Indigenous people by an earlier generation of death squads. Mixing fraught reminiscence with vivid reportage—his driver, a Salvadoran Army veteran, recalls a mission to recover the corpses of comrades: “When we started picking them up, we yanked the meat right off them, like when you have a fried fish and the skin and meat fall right off”—Lovato delivers an intimate, gripping portrait of El Salvador’s agony. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
What is Unforgetting—a coming of age story, a thriller, a slice of hemispheric history? All I can say for sure is that it’s both gripping and beautiful. With the artistry of a poet and the intensity of a revolutionary, Lovato untangles the tightly knit skein of love and terror that connects El Salvador and the United States. This book is an eye-opener into a world Anglo-Americans have been taught is enemy territory.” — Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Natural Causes and Nickel and Dimed
“There has never been a book about the Latinx experience quite like Roberto Lovato’s Unforgetting. Here is a voice that is outraged, philosophical, thoughtful, blunt, emotional, and, above all, fiercely independent. In this illuminating and insightful memoir, Lovato journeys into the underworlds of the fraught history of El Salvador, and his own California upbringing, and finds injustice, resistance, and hope.” — Héctor Tobar, author of Deep Down Dark and The Tattooed Soldier
“Groundbreaking…. A kaleidoscopic montage that is at once a family saga, a coming-of-age story and a meditation on the vicissitudes of history, community and, most of all for [Lovato], identity.” — Carolyn Forché, New York Times
“Journalist Lovato’s raw memoir moves from his youth in 1970s California to his time in war-torn El Salvador. He writes unflinchingly about extreme poverty and the trauma of violence and war in a way that is at once extremely personal, expansive and timely.” — Newsweek
“Electrifying. . . . Throughout this panoptic personal narrative, Lovato aims to reframe Salvadoran American identity itself. And at a crucial national moment, he also reminds us that diaspora Latin Americans in the United States . . . share a collective experience marked by historical trauma but also enormous wells of resilience.” — Daniel Hernandez, Los Angeles Times
“Lovato… a preeminent voice on Central America’s tribulations… shows how reportage that is rooted in personal biography and inner turmoil can unveil a more powerful kind of truth.” — New Republic
“With the precision of a master seamstress… Lovato braids a narrative that spans nine decades and weaves together El Salvador’s history of genocide, civil war, revolution and migration with his family’s own…. Lovato’s book is a brave examination of the oft-erased history of Salvadorans.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“For generations, from McKinley to Trump, the United States has cast a shadow of exploitation and counter-revolution over Central America. In this stunning tale of love and horror, the journalist Roberto Lovato recounts how his own family history, from the indentured Salvadoran countryside to the burning streets of Los Angeles, has been shaped by resistance to yanqui violence.” — Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz and Set the Night on Fire
“‘Unforgetting’ explores the traumatic history of a country torn apart by wars and gangs—and the dangers of not facing the past…. The title of Lovato’s book: “Unforgetting” is both a salve and a way of exposing the truth…. Lovato’s writing about memory and reconciliation speaks powerfully to [the] truth… that terror is never a given but rather a consequence of how power is wielded in history.” — New Republic
“In a memoir that is at once profoundly personal and historically significant, accomplished journalist and scholar Lovato… relates gripping true stories populated by heroic, doomed, resilient, and unforgettable characters who shine in their humanity, hope, and endurance. This mix of memoir and history is an essential chronicle, solidly researched and carefully sourced, and enriched with some poetry and plenty of hard-won wisdom.” — Booklist, starred review
“A provocative, revealing work of journalism that explains gang behavior but does not idealize it.” — Kirkus
"Unforgetting is unforgettable. It teaches an essential history which all of us desperately need in order to understand the society in which we live. A finely woven tapestry of inheritance, culture and love, this story of Latinidad in the United States is specifically Salvadoreño yet sits in a breathtaking archipelago of communities and histories on and across borders. With marvelous, intimate storytelling Lovato's coming of age story displaces ugly myths about Central America and its gangs with the truth of what made America, beginning with the ongoing violence of conquest and culminating with the gorgeous repetition of freedom dreams." — Imani Perry, Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of Looking for Lorraine and Breathe: A Letter to My Sons
“Mixing fraught reminiscence with vivid reportage… Lovato delivers an intimate, gripping portrait of El Salvador’s agony.” — Publishers Weekly
“Salvadorans are ‘a people in the constant motion of overcoming,’ Roberto Lovato writes in his pivotal debut Unforgetting. In it, he runs a machete through himself and his family’s history—the 1932 Matanza, the 1980s civil war, and our present-day struggles with gang-violence and migration. With raw honesty, Lovato partakes in a much-needed excavation of what it means to be ‘Salvadoran’—and ‘American’—in this world. Unforgetting is an opening, a tear in the cloth, we Salvadorans must speak through.” — Javier Zamora, author of Unaccompanied
Daniel Hernandez
Electrifying. . . . Throughout this panoptic personal narrative, Lovato aims to reframe Salvadoran American identity itself. And at a crucial national moment, he also reminds us that diaspora Latin Americans in the United States . . . share a collective experience marked by historical trauma but also enormous wells of resilience.
starred review Booklist
In a memoir that is at once profoundly personal and historically significant, accomplished journalist and scholar Lovato… relates gripping true stories populated by heroic, doomed, resilient, and unforgettable characters who shine in their humanity, hope, and endurance. This mix of memoir and history is an essential chronicle, solidly researched and carefully sourced, and enriched with some poetry and plenty of hard-won wisdom.
Barbara Ehrenreich
What is Unforgetting—a coming of age story, a thriller, a slice of hemispheric history? All I can say for sure is that it’s both gripping and beautiful. With the artistry of a poet and the intensity of a revolutionary, Lovato untangles the tightly knit skein of love and terror that connects El Salvador and the United States. This book is an eye-opener into a world Anglo-Americans have been taught is enemy territory.
Carolyn Forché
Groundbreaking…. A kaleidoscopic montage that is at once a family saga, a coming-of-age story and a meditation on the vicissitudes of history, community and, most of all for [Lovato], identity.
Mike Davis
For generations, from McKinley to Trump, the United States has cast a shadow of exploitation and counter-revolution over Central America. In this stunning tale of love and horror, the journalist Roberto Lovato recounts how his own family history, from the indentured Salvadoran countryside to the burning streets of Los Angeles, has been shaped by resistance to yanqui violence.
Newsweek
Journalist Lovato’s raw memoir moves from his youth in 1970s California to his time in war-torn El Salvador. He writes unflinchingly about extreme poverty and the trauma of violence and war in a way that is at once extremely personal, expansive and timely.
San Francisco Chronicle
With the precision of a master seamstress… Lovato braids a narrative that spans nine decades and weaves together El Salvador’s history of genocide, civil war, revolution and migration with his family’s own…. Lovato’s book is a brave examination of the oft-erased history of Salvadorans.
New Republic
Lovato… a preeminent voice on Central America’s tribulations… shows how reportage that is rooted in personal biography and inner turmoil can unveil a more powerful kind of truth.
Héctor Tobar
There has never been a book about the Latinx experience quite like Roberto Lovato’s Unforgetting. Here is a voice that is outraged, philosophical, thoughtful, blunt, emotional, and, above all, fiercely independent. In this illuminating and insightful memoir, Lovato journeys into the underworlds of the fraught history of El Salvador, and his own California upbringing, and finds injustice, resistance, and hope.
Newsweek
Journalist Lovato’s raw memoir moves from his youth in 1970s California to his time in war-torn El Salvador. He writes unflinchingly about extreme poverty and the trauma of violence and war in a way that is at once extremely personal, expansive and timely.
San Francisco Chronicle
With the precision of a master seamstress… Lovato braids a narrative that spans nine decades and weaves together El Salvador’s history of genocide, civil war, revolution and migration with his family’s own…. Lovato’s book is a brave examination of the oft-erased history of Salvadorans.
Javier Zamora
Salvadorans are ‘a people in the constant motion of overcoming,’ Roberto Lovato writes in his pivotal debut Unforgetting. In it, he runs a machete through himself and his family’s history—the 1932 Matanza, the 1980s civil war, and our present-day struggles with gang-violence and migration. With raw honesty, Lovato partakes in a much-needed excavation of what it means to be ‘Salvadoran’—and ‘American’—in this world. Unforgetting is an opening, a tear in the cloth, we Salvadorans must speak through.
Imani Perry
"Unforgetting is unforgettable. It teaches an essential history which all of us desperately need in order to understand the society in which we live. A finely woven tapestry of inheritance, culture and love, this story of Latinidad in the United States is specifically Salvadoreño yet sits in a breathtaking archipelago of communities and histories on and across borders. With marvelous, intimate storytelling Lovato's coming of age story displaces ugly myths about Central America and its gangs with the truth of what made America, beginning with the ongoing violence of conquest and culminating with the gorgeous repetition of freedom dreams."
Library Journal
01/08/2021
In this challenging and rewarding book, journalist and activist Lovato passionately weaves his own highly personal account with those of the people of El Salvador along with Salvadorans in the United States. As portrayed here, they share a unified narrative that Lovato and many others have lived in the decades leading up to the present day. His book takes readers on an exploration of his recollections, including his memories of his father's experiences in a violent 1930s anti-dictatorship uprising. While Lovato explores his and Salvadoran's remembrances, he incorporates history of both El Salvador and the communities in the United States to which people migrated. He also argues against atrocities and multiple wrongs visited on Salvadorans. The book is not particularly easy to read, in part because of the sometimes-violent content, but also because Lovato's work moves dizzyingly back and forth in time and place. But, overall, he takes readers into the minds of those who lived through and often propagated violence affecting the lives of so many other Salvadorans, including himself. VERDICT Lovato's revealing story enables us to look within minds and hearts that have been molded by immigrants' experiences in their home country and their adopted one. A worthwhile account that brings a personal face to a complex, nuanced issue.—Charles K. Piehl, Minnesota State Univ., Mankato
Kirkus Reviews
2020-07-08
Journalist and activist Lovato delivers a memorable indictment of the civil war in Central America that drove a wave of migration to the U.S.—and spawned gang warfare in the new country.
In the 1980s, gangs of young Salvadorans who called themselves “maras”—a name that derives, improbably, from the Spanish title of a Charlton Heston movie—became infamous for fighting with machetes in the streets of Los Angeles. It was not macho posturing, writes the author, whose family fled the U.S.–backed authoritarian regime, but instead desperation: They had no access to the guns that other gangs carried. “These skinny kids came together out of immigrant loneliness and their love of Ronnie James Dio and Metallica,” Lovato writes. “Their hardcore violence is a relatively recent development. Even today, most gang members aren’t killers.” As the Salvadorans became better organized and better armed, they formed the infamous MS-13: “The mara violence that escalated following the LA riots of April 1992 reminded us that time is cyclical, and that violence moves in spirals as the innocent choose between becoming the violent or the violated—or both.” Before that, writes Lovato, the Salvadoran kids were longhaired metal heads who hung out at convenience stores. Lovato’s meaningful title draws from the Greek word for truth, its literal meaning not forgetting, which is essential, since so many Salvadorans are trying to forget the violence that destroyed their homeland and continues to rage today. Lovato traveled throughout both the U.S. and El Salvador to study this violence, some of which he dismisses as overblown if politically useful propaganda—though its government-spawned versions, such as the Chalatenango massacre of civilians by elite Salvadoran troops, have proven very real. Lovato identifies a logical chain: Against the machete-bearing kids, the LA police became militarized, bringing the war back home and establishing a pattern that persists today.
A provocative, revealing work of journalism that explains gang behavior but does not idealize it.
