My Side of the River

Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez's memoir traces her journey from childhood in a Mexican immigrant family in Tucson, Arizona, through family separation, homelessness, an Ivy League education, and the ongoing responsibility of caring for the family she left behind.

The memoir opens with the Rillito River, a mostly dry riverbed dividing Tucson in half, separating immigrant households to the south from wealthier, predominantly white neighborhoods to the north. Elizabeth uses the river as a lens for her own life: Wealth and poverty exist side by side but remain divided, and there are seasons of drought and plenty. She notes one key distinction: Unlike the river, she will always return to Mexico.

Elizabeth was born in Tucson in 1995 to Mexican parents, Rubén and Eliza, who crossed the border on tourist visas so their daughter could be a U.S. citizen. Around 1999, the family settled permanently in Tucson, sharing a cramped trailer with Rubén's brother, tío Miguel, and his family. Elizabeth's parents were consumed by her education, rejecting the local school and enrolling her at Richardson Elementary outside their zip code. On her first day of kindergarten, her mother told her, "You have to be the best" (17), a mandate Elizabeth would carry for the rest of her life.

Eliza took a midnight janitorial job at a movie theater, where both parents cleaned screening rooms nightly. Elizabeth often accompanied them, sleeping on bleach-sprayed benches, partly because Miguel's violence toward his wife was escalating at home.

When Eliza became pregnant, Elizabeth's paternal grandparents visited from Mexico and pressured Rubén for money while belittling Eliza. After abuela Delia shamed Rubén for performing domestic tasks, he became rough with Elizabeth, and when Eliza intervened, he shoved her into the bathtub while she was heavily pregnant. Eliza called 911; Rubén was arrested, released the same day, and agreed to anger management.

Fernando was born prematurely after Eliza tripped over construction debris left in the trailer's yard. He spent 16 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, and the hospital bill exceeded $50,000. Rubén recovered unpaid wages by threatening the theater's contracting company with legal action, then sued the construction workers responsible for the debris, using the settlement to pay the bill. Fernando would have asthma for life.

Rubén eventually took a factory job working with hazardous chrome dust. Because he lacked legal work authorization, he signed the paperwork under a false name, telling Elizabeth his real name "doesn't matter here in America" (53). When Miguel destroyed Elizabeth's bedroom in a rage, the family left the trailer and moved into el cuartito, a converted backyard shed at another uncle's property with train tracks feet from the wall.

By 2008, the recession had cut Rubén's hours. The family collected aluminum cans to sell at a scrapyard while a beachfront property they owned in Sonora, called La Escondida, was contested by an American who claimed ownership and filed court challenges, draining their savings in legal fees.

In 2010, Arizona's anti-immigrant climate intensified with the passage of Senate Bill 1070, a law allowing police to demand immigration documents based on suspicion. Elizabeth's parents' tourist visas expired in January 2011. They returned to Mexico to reapply, leaving Elizabeth and Fernando with a family friend. Two months later, both applications were denied, and the family was told not to reapply for three years.

Elizabeth sobbed, then cradled her wailing eight-year-old brother, promising to keep him safe. The next day, her transcript arrived: a 4.0 GPA, ranked first in her class. Weeks later, her parents sent an uncle to pick Fernando up from school and drive him to Mexico without telling Elizabeth, robbing her of a goodbye. At Richardson Elementary, her former computer lab teacher, Mrs. Hernandez, offered to let Elizabeth live with her family to finish high school.

That summer in Mexico, Elizabeth confronted her parents' deteriorating marriage and Rubén's refusal to let her return to the United States. She stopped eating for weeks, wielding hunger as her only form of control. Eliza told Rubén, "You're killing her. You are going to kill her" (112). He broke and promised to drive Elizabeth back.

At the Nogales border, Fernando crumpled into tears. Elizabeth knelt and promised to return. Her mother told her she was strong. Elizabeth walked to the border officer, handed over her passport, and when asked where she was going, replied, "I'm going home" (120).

Life with the Hernandez family proved difficult. Elizabeth was assigned the living room couch, given strict rules, and gradually excluded from meals. She survived on friends' leftovers and cereal blended with water. A school social worker enrolled her in Youth On Their Own (YOTO), a dropout prevention program for homeless and at-risk youth that provided a monthly stipend, a food pantry, glasses, and free school meals.

With her basic needs met, Elizabeth refocused on academics. At Earth Camp through the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, a Navajo guide named Wapi shared the history of the Diné people and the Long Walk, the U.S. government's forced removal of the Navajo. His stories of family separation and resilience echoed her own experience, and she decided to study political science and environmental science.

Junior year, when Diane Hernandez called Elizabeth a burden, Elizabeth handed back her house keys and returned to the now-empty el cuartito. Selected for the Jewish-Latino Teen Coalition, she traveled to Washington, D.C., where she spontaneously told her story at the Religious Action Center. The audience gave her a standing ovation.

Elizabeth applied to more than 20 colleges and was accepted at Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, and others. She graduated as valedictorian, with her parents watching via livestream from Mexico.

At the University of Pennsylvania on a full-ride scholarship, Elizabeth initially thrived, forming deep friendships with fellow first-generation students. Sophomore year brought declining grades, social isolation from her decision not to drink, and escalating anxiety. Junior year, a burglar broke into her off-campus apartment, intensifying her panic attacks until she contemplated ending her life. She sought help at Penn's counseling services and was prescribed medication that gradually stabilized her.

She developed a formula for monetizing her trauma in job interviews, packaging her family's story for recruiters. She tried to get Fernando into elite boarding schools, but every application was rejected. She resolved that after graduation, Fernando would live with her.

She took a job at Wells Fargo in New York, enduring a hostile team and microaggressions while raising Fernando, now a teenager. She reviewed his homework nightly and recognized her own stress-driven outbursts mirroring her father's. A TED Talk she gave went viral. When her contract was not renewed, other teams reached out during the pandemic. Fernando was eventually accepted to Middlebury College in Vermont.

After dropping Fernando off at college, Elizabeth left finance for a tech role and lived alone for the first time. In Mexico, a family reunion over Sonoran tamales on mismatched plates made her feel ordinary and at peace. Days later, Rubén was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, possibly linked to his factory work. Elizabeth arranged surgery in Mexico City, and the tumor was successfully removed.

Her mother eventually urged her to leave, insisting there was nothing for Elizabeth in the town they had worked so hard to escape. On the Oaxaca Coast, a surfer named Carlos taught Elizabeth to ride waves, explaining that undertow currents could be used as paths rather than fought. She caught a wave, tumbled under the surface, and resurfaced. Paddling toward shore, she wondered whether the currents she had fought her whole life were actually guiding her toward who she really is: "an ordinary Brown girl, letting the waves crash over me, just learning how to surf" (258).