The 40 Questions
Which intake question seems straightforward, but actually hides layers of complexity?
“Why did you come to the United States?” (p. 10).
It demands a single, legal-sounding motive for stories driven by layered causes—violence, poverty, family rupture, survival.
It ignores history.
“Blindly, we simply followed all the questions… and translated the answers” (p. 39). What role is she describing?
Answer: Interpreter and translator in intake screenings—conduit for children’s responses.
“‘What child can find a lawyer in twenty-one days?’” (p. 41). What is Luiselli criticizing here?
Answer: The unrealistic deadlines imposed by the priority juvenile docket.
Yes
From which regions do many children in the book arrive?
A: Central America—Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala.
How do the 40 questions reflect what the U.S. wants versus what the children need to say?
A: They prioritize legal facts (dates, routes, guardianship) over trauma, feelings, or lived experience.
“It was clear our only role in the court was to serve as a fragile and slippery bridge between the children and the court system” (p. 67). What does this metaphor say about her power and limits?
Answer: She can carry voices across but cannot shield them from the system’s harms.
Luiselli calls the court “a cruel lottery.” What does this metaphor reveal about outcomes in immigration cases?
Answer: They are arbitrary, depending on judge, timing, or backlog rather than justice.
What story or moment in the book most strongly gave you a sense of a child’s perspective?
Page citation needed
Name two dangers children face en route.
Gangs/cartels; assault; hunger/thirst; deadly train hazards.
Why might the question “Why did you come to the United States?” be both the simplest and hardest?
A: It demands a one-line answer for something rooted in violence, poverty, family, and survival. It ignores history or supplants a particular reason un/known to a child.
“We were… asking ourselves… the same question I now ask children… ‘Why did you come…?’” (p. 10). How does placing her own migration beside the children’s complicate her stance?
Answer: It exposes unequal stakes—her visa anxieties versus the children’s survival.
How does paperwork itself become another form of violence in the book?
Answer: Minor errors or missing details can erase entire stories and decide life-or-death outcomes.
Silence recurs throughout the book. How does Luiselli turn silence into testimony?
Answer: Silence itself signals trauma, fear, and what cannot be spoken.
How does debt inform unaccompanied childhood migration?
If you could add one question to the intake form, what would it be?
DOUBLE JEOPARDY — free for all! “Deportation proceedings… accelerated by 94 percent” under the priority juvenile docket (p. 40). How does this force the narrator from witness toward critic?
Answer: The speed and denial of due process push her into overt condemnation of state cruelty.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY — blood bath! If the docket was designed to “prioritize” children, why does Luiselli frame it as violent?
Answer: Because “priority” meant deportation speed, not care or protection.
FREE FOR ALL — up for grabs! How do the deadlines of the priority juvenile docket affect the possibility for children to speak fully?
Answer: The rushed process silences them further, leaving little time to articulate their stories.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY — blood bath! How does the priority juvenile docket, when paired with border violence, show the U.S. as complicit in suffering?
Answer: It criminalizes arrival, speeds deportations, and denies asylum, echoing the dangers the children fled.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY — up for grabs!
The intake was assembled to channel cases quickly (p. 40). How does that design purpose shape the forty questions themselves?
Built for triage: they sort into legal pathways fast, narrowing what gets asked and recorded under time pressure, even by non-government actors with good intentions (limited by the system).
BLOOD BATH What’s one concrete choice Luiselli makes as a writer-mother that a lawyer or judge wouldn’t — why does this matter for how the story is told?
Answer: She foregrounds empathy and narrative fragmentation, emphasizing affect rather than technical procedure.
DOUBLE JEOPARDY — blood bath!
If the docket was designed to “prioritize” children, why does Luiselli frame it as a form of violence?
Because “priority” meant deportation speed, not care or protection.
What was the name of the legal instrumentation used to expedite the deportation? And for double points under what Presidential administration and in what year was it created?
Priority Juvenile Docket - 2014, Pres Obama
FREE FOR ALL If you could add one song to Luiselli’s book as part of a playlist, which would it be and why?
Mid-term Reference! I need a song!