Name: Indivisible
ISBN: 9781368056083

Daniel Aleman

New York City high school student Mateo dreams of becoming a Broadway star, but his life is transformed after his parents are deported to Mexico.

Indivisible

priya

CW: (view spoiler)[deportation, verbal racial insults (off page), homophobia associated with Catholic Church (off page), anxiety, panic attacks. (hide spoiler)]

Indivisible reminds me of The Hate U Give because I started crying near the beginning and didn’t stop the whole way. Daniel Aleman and Angie Thomas’ novels are obviously similar in more important ways. They both have teenaged main characters who directly experience racial injustice and suffer at the hands of the American carceral system.

Mateo, the main character of Indivisible, is such a sweet and caring brother, friend and son who loves theatre. I loved reading about Mateo’s friends, Kimmie and Adam, and how genuine their friendship dynamic is, including break ups and make ups.

"The rest of the walk back to the bodega is mostly quiet. There doesn’t seem to be anything left to say, so neither of us tries to speak up. We just walk comfortably in silence, the way that only real friends can."

The characters are actually diverse and the representation is great: Mateo is gay and Mexican, Adam is gay and Italian and Kimmie is Korean and white.

Mateo’s relationship with Sophie, his seven year old sister, is super sweet and realistic in how he cares for her, gets annoyed at her and sacrifices his time and little money to make her happy. It’s incredibly unfair that Mateo has to step in as Sophie’s parent and friend when he’s only 15/16/17 (I’m permanently confused about American schooling ages).

I really loved Mateo’s relationship with his parents. Aleman makes it obvious how much they both love him and always want the best for him and, I wish I didn’t have to mention this, accept that he’s gay. Mateo and Sophie being separated from their parents is so sad and infuriating and unjust. Having to live with the threat of deportation for over twenty years sounds unbearable, but when their fear comes true, Mateo’s family is heartbroken.

"I hate this, I think to myself as I try to hold in the tears that are threatening to fall from my eyes. I just wish I could speak up. Maybe telling my family about this deep, dark feeling of sadness would help make it go away, but what’s the point of talking about these things, anyway? There’s nothing we can do."

I have to say that I didn’t enjoy or understand the romance between Mateo and Adam. It felt a bit forced in my opinion, just because of the proximity of two gay people. Adam’s attraction to Mateo felt much more genuine than the other way around.

I recommend Indivisible if you want to read about racial issues in an imperialist society from a teenager’s perspective.

Beth Seaton

This timely, moving debut novel follows a teen's efforts to keep his family together as his parents face deportation. Mateo Garcia and his younger sister, Sophie, have been taught to fear one word for as long as they can remember: deportation. Over the past few years, however, the fear that their undocumented immigrant parents could be sent back to Mexico has started to fade. Ma and Pa have been in the United States for so long, they have American-born children, and they're hard workers and good neighbors. When Mateo returns from school one day to find that his parents have been taken by ICE, he realizes that his family's worst nightmare has become a reality. With his parents' fate and his own future hanging in the balance, Mateo must figure out who he is and what he is capable of, even as he's forced to question what it means to be an American. Daniel Aleman's Indivisible is a remarkable story—both powerful in its explorations of immigration in America and deeply intimate in its portrait of a teen boy driven by his fierce, protective love for his parents and his sister.

Indivisible

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